Vision/Web Inspection

Just curious if anyone has or uses any form of off the shelf software and hardware to view a web (repeats) at up to 1500 feet a minute.

rsdoran,

I have been involved with web inspection in the past, and I can assure you it is not an off of the shelf product. To view an application such as this is very specialized and usually requires a PC based vision system such as Cognex.

The Cognex system is very expensive and hard to set up, in fact I would highly recommend that you do not attempt this application yourself, even if you have some vision experience.

Because of the complexity of this type of application I would ask Cognex for a quote, which is what we did on our application. Cognex will then guarantee the performance of their system, but you should be prepared to spend $80K plus depending on the size of the web. Oh yeah the plus could be well over $100K, so be prepared for the sticker shock, but its money well spent.

I am not sure what type of web you want to inspect or the value of the product, but if you need web inspection this is the way I would go again, should the opportunity arise.

Mike

The web inspection is just visual, the video system doesnt have to do any fault recognition. When I say visual I mean the operators have to view the web/repeats to look for defects.

I have several systems now, CC1 (dont like), Fife (ok but ?) and BST which I kind of like. None are at the price range you mentioned but for my purposes I think it could be done cheaper and simpler, although I am not sure it would be any simpler/cheaper than BST.

Just curious is why I asked.

The web is 30 to 40" wide and has up to 3 repeats, usually 9". The paper is being printed on and the operator needs to view it for defects, the view area does not have to be the full width but hopefully a repeat will be captured.

I am studying the options, just wondered if others had done this.

Yes, we do.

we had CC1, threw them away, now have BST genius. Genius ids the automated defect detection system. We plan to buy 2 view only systems to replace scan-a-webs on our laminating machines this year.

AVT is another outfit we looked at before buying the BST systems.

In another application, we use a Keyence two camera system to take simultaneous pictures of printed width marks on each side of the web. The system measures from mark to mark, considers the relative position of the cameras, then reports repeat width. The same system reports length of repeat also but vision is not used for that.