Vision Systems

Greg Dake · Feb 22, 2006

Okay, so now we're going to be installing vision inspection systems on some of our plant equipment.....Is there someone who knows of a place to get general theories and practices behind vision system inspection?

TIA,

Greg

mgvol · Feb 22, 2006

DVT used to provide a 4 day training session for free near their plant in Atlanta. You just had to spring for the room & board. This was before Cognex purchased them, so they may no longer be doing it. It was great training though. Although I only did a couple of vision jobs, the one thing I remember the most is LIGHTING. Can be easily oerlooked on the first go-round, but will eat your lunch if not done properly. Also, see if any distributors or engineering firms offer any lunch & learn type mini seminars; the DVT reps/preferred integrators used to do these upon request.

Greg Dake · Feb 22, 2006

Hey, thanks for the feedback.......I saw that several manufacturers had 2-4 day training sessions......I was actually just looking for local distributor lunch/learn 3 hour classes here in Milwaukee....I thought maybe there would be an online resource or a good book, possibly from ISA or something too?

Greg

mgvol · Feb 22, 2006

DVT also used to post a lot of stuff on their web-site; it would be worth a look...

Greg Dake · Feb 22, 2006

Thanks again...

mgvol · Feb 22, 2006

http://www.dvtsensors.com/

Look under training and under downloads.

RussB · Feb 22, 2006

Try Powermation 262-408-6100

LStewart · Feb 22, 2006

I don't know if they still have it but DVT used to have an online course that was very good.

Bob O · Feb 22, 2006

Greg,

I have installed a number of DVT vision systems [10] in our plant and if you have any questions about the DVT systems, I would be more then happy to try to help.

Bob O.

Edit

I want to add that all vision systems have their pros and cons and you should factor in your local support for the system you choose.

BobB · Feb 23, 2006

This site may be of interest to you. Just select United Kingdom. They appear to claim never fail vision systems.

http://www.never-fail.info/

jstolaruk · Feb 23, 2006

The Cognex/DVT solution is a no-brainer choice. But as mgvol as pointed out, everything is lighting and lenses. Worst case is that you have to enclose the item to shield out ambient light and give yourself a lot of mechanical adjustability in lense-to-specimen distance. Lighting is not cheap either, figure some of those strobes can get in to the couple-of-hundred price range. The software is so easy just about anyone with a couple of minutes of training from the salesguy can do it.

In the past, I've seen plenty of customers bit by claims of the lesser known manufacturers that they could do the job only to find out their software wasn't up to task and had to buy a DVT or Cognex solution anyways; lots of time lost. I don't even bother with anyone else anymore either.

rsdoran · Feb 23, 2006

I think it could depend on what you are doing. If you have a printing process then you may need something developed for that; http://www.bstpromark.com/products/products.html

Steve Etter · Feb 23, 2006

jstolaruk said:
The Cognex/DVT solution is a no-brainer choice.

I can't quite agree here. At our company, we are starting to use Cognex less and less and some of the other brands more. We have found Cognex support to be wanting.

While Cognex may well meet your needs, I would also suggest looking at the offerings from both Omron and Keyence. As Ron said, it really depends on what you are doing, but Omron has a sweet little system that can be programmed with minimal programming and is very inexpensive (comparitively speaking) and Keyence offers a very simple system that does a very nice job detecting colors. Neither of these requires an external PC interface or software as Cognex does.

I really all comes down to your specific needs.

Steve

MartB · Feb 23, 2006

We switched to Keyence for one of our recent projects (customer spec) and I have to admit it was a nice system to work with and I have to say that local support was excellent (had them onsite within 24hrs of request).
From our experience I would say that Keyence is a viable option for future use, but we have always used DVT/Cognex in the past.

Oh, and I agree lighting is everything ! If you can't see it correctly, you can't make correct descisions.

Mart B

croakus · Feb 23, 2006

As said above, lighting can make or break you. We went the cheaper route with Banner since we're just looking for part present. But to get away from outside interference we use infrared LED lights and an infrared filter added to the camera. It works really well. Workstation lighting could be on or off and it doesn't matter.

Check this out. It looks to have everthing you could want to know on vision.

Cognex was quite amazing when I work on Fuji surface mount placement equipment. It could inspect four parts per second which included: # of leads on an IC, the lead pitch, IC body offset from vacuum pickup nozzle, check for bent leads, lead thickness, and this was in 1992!

Mike

Vision Systems

Greg Dake

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mgvol

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Greg Dake

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mgvol

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Greg Dake

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mgvol

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RussB

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LStewart

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Bob O

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BobB

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jstolaruk

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rsdoran

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Steve Etter

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MartB

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croakus

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