part removal vision system

[Mueller34]

For a thermoset molder I am looking for a vision system that can monitor part removal from a mold. The mold temps can range anywhere from 300 to 450 degrees fahrenheit. Their issue is that the operator will occasionally forget to remove the part and add more material and start the next cycle. This causes them a major issue and mold damage that takes a lot of money and time to repair on top of their loss of production. I have found moldwatcher from avalon systems (https://avalonvisionsolutions.com/solutions/moldwatcher/) but I am trying to see if anyone knows of a solution that would be less expensive. I would be intergrating into the press that is being run with 1769-L30ER version 30.011 and a safety module 440C-CR30-22BBB.

Thanks

 

[PreLC]

Not sure what the cost of this speciality "Moldwatcher" is, but usually any vision system should be able to do detection like this which can tell you about part presence.

Go with Cognex, Keyence for a vision system. If not, IFM also has these vision "Sensors" instead of cameras, which actually detect the distance of a point-cloud from the camera itself. If you get a good mounting location, those might work.

 

[RedDraw]

I've been trying to design/find a perfect system for a while. There are quite a few things you need decide depending on your needs. My biggest hurdle has been the operator interface. I prefer working with the cognex programming enviroment but haven't been able to design an interface that would allow the operator an easy way to re-draw and re-teach tools. That's why we are currently using the Avalon systems. One of our problems with the Avalon is that we mold small parts quickly with a cavitation of up to 128. If you bump the camera you have to reteach the tool's locations. We can't use a locate reference tool because it adds too much time to the processing.

Also, if you have a Euromap 12 or 67 connection (usually used for a parts picker) on your IMM you can interface directly to the machine. I would'nt worry about going through the safety module as mold protection isn't a safety issue.

 

[Mueller34]

Thanks all. I think the moldwatcher is an excellent system but at $17,000 was not quite in the budget. being we have a 2 cavity mold that only 1 cavity is being ran at a time, I think we may go with Keyence. After taking to an application guy from there it sounds like the IV3 series should work for us. It has built in ethernet ip, easily programmable, and uses ai-based detection.

 

[codedRed]

I've been trying to design/find a perfect system for a while. There are quite a few things you need decide depending on your needs. My biggest hurdle has been the operator interface. I prefer working with the cognex programming enviroment but haven't been able to design an interface that would allow the operator an easy way to re-draw and re-teach tools. That's why we are currently using the Avalon systems. One of our problems with the Avalon is that we mold small parts quickly with a cavitation of up to 128. If you bump the camera you have to reteach the tool's locations. We can't use a locate reference tool because it adds too much time to the processing.

Also, if you have a Euromap 12 or 67 connection (usually used for a parts picker) on your IMM you can interface directly to the machine. I would'nt worry about going through the safety module as mold protection isn't a safety issue.

Cognex has an HMI called VisionView.. you can set these up allow an operator to adjust certain tools (including region tools).

Alternatively you could get a VisionView license and run VisionView through an Allen-Bradley HMI - and other HMI's I'm sure.