Vision Inspector™ Beacon for Web Inspection

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Vision Inspector™ Beacon for Web Inspection meets all of your quality assurance needs for inspecting web materials. Beacon for Web provides flawless inspection at the highest line speeds with the fewest false positives in the industry. Beacon for Web far exceeds smart camera capability in terms of line speed, inspection accuracy, scalability, complexity, and flexibility.

Identify and Characterize Multiple Defects Types At Top Speeds

With Beacon for Web you can examine for a multitude of defect types simultaneously. Defects types that Beacon for Web can detect include:

    • Registration/Alignment
    • Regularity
    • Pin Holes
    • Uniformity
    • Color Consistency
    • Surface defects and non-uniformities (cracks, texture, dirt, hairs, holes, wrinkles, streaks, craters, seeds, stains, roll marks, punctures, bubbles, etc.)

The Beacon system is a complete solution including lighting, camera(s) and optics, reporting, and training.

Key Benefits

    • In-line inspection with customizable logic to meet 100% of your specific needs.
    • Quickly and easily find and review identified defects and anomalies.
    • Ability to characterize defects.
    • Quickly and easily find specific events for detailed examination.
    • Integrates into automation systems via PLC.
    • Video archiving of defects or anomalies for forensic analysis.
    • Monitor multiple Beacon for Web Systems from a single monitoring station.
    • Remote management and monitoring of any Beacon System.

 

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What the system does

Vision Inspector Beacon for Web scans the surface of materials and instantly analyzes the surface for defects, non-uniformities, and other characteristics. Defects can include chips, bubbles, inclusions, scratches, dents, non-registration, or any other non-uniformity. It can also inspect thickness of coatings on many types of coated materials.

You can now affordably and instantly inspect 100% of your web, at the highest line speeds with the fewest false positives. 

Beacon for Web categorizes and determines pass or fail and sends the results to a robotic system or other automated handling system to sort as appropriate. A high resolution image and a detailed data profile of the defects are stored and made available from the quality control station for further analysis. Generate reports describing overall and specific performance characteristics of the web material and the production process. This allows you to identify and correct specific problems in real time.

The system provides you with an easy to use interface for viewing identified defects, finding and viewing specific stored inspection events, and archiving video or still images of a defect for later review.

How Crane Currency uses Beacon for Web Inspection

Crane

Crane Currency is one of the oldest companies in the banknote industry, making paper, developing security features, and printing banknotes for more than 250 years. Today, the company is considered a worldwide leader in the field. 

The Beacon for Web system provides 100% inspection accuracy at speeds of 750 ft/min. for the inspection of registration errors (font clipping), down to an accuracy of 10 microns, on regular and reverse text on mylar.  It also detects and counts metallic splices. This high performance system records video data continuously up to the last six hours of inspection which can be reviewed during machine down time. The system allows for customized control including the ability to define pre and post event detection lengths for automatic and manual event detection. The Beacon for Web system also provides periodic reporting of performance data to the PLC including font positional data for statistical analysis.

All inspection data associated with an inspection event, such as registration failures, splice events, or user-triggered events is stored for forensic analysis. Boulder Imaging’s Event Viewer Software, a key component of the Beacon for Web system, provides the ability for Crane personnel to review events from any windows-based computer that has a network connection to the beacon system. This allows for real time playback while inspection continues, including the ability to zoom and scroll through recorded images. Inspection monitoring and control operations are also provided real time.  

The system is completely integrated into Crane’s automation system, providing auto-stop and start capability when defects are encountered.  

Take Maximum Advantage of the Beacon for Web Inspection

Beacon for Web from Boulder Imaging is your critical tool for quality control and assurance, supply quality management, equipment resource management, line productivity, and system process improvement.

 

How Lexmark uses the system today


At Lexmark, the Beacon system both inspects printer drums at rates of 80 parts/min per production line and guides robots to sort the drums into “pass”or “fail” groups. There are 4 production lines currently being inspected. In addition, an operator workstation for each line allows an engineer to view defects as well as to perform rule-based classification into likely causes of the defects on the production line, improving overall assembly line quality and control.


The defects can be extremely small (bubbles, scratches, etc. down to 50 microns) and require powerful image processing to detect and classify. The BI system reduced 40% of costs due to defects in the printer drum manufacturing process.


The Quazar Vision Inspector system can also easily grow with Lexmark. As Lexmark creates new models, a simple tuning of algorithms for defect detection is all that is required. In effect, this solution addresses both current requirements and future needs while cutting down historical problems with false positives.


Boulder Imaging also had to address environmental and materials challenges in the solution design and implementation. Factors such as surface reflection, lighting, camera selection, etc., were all carefully integrated to create the successful implementation for Lexmark.


"Boulder Imaging has been our exclusive imaging system partner for over four years. In that time we have integrated four of their inspection systems into our production lines. These production lines run 24/7 and we depend on the inspection systems from Boulder Imaging to be 100% reliable. We can't run without them. The reliability has been excellent. These inspection systems are tightly coupled to our robotic parts handling systems. So we not only had the challenges of capturing and processing quality images, but also doing it within the time and space limitations of the work cell."

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ALERT: Smart Camera Limitations

13 Truths About Smart CamerasSmart Cameras have come a long way but don't think for a second that they can do complex or high speed quality inspection. Get the details on Smart Camera shortcomings with our FREE WHITE PAPER: 13 Little Truths About Smart Cameras. Don't let the Smart Camera limitations catch you.

 

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