Camera-based cap control with artificial intelligence
Strong price pressure combined with high quality requirements - the beverage and bottle industry faces the classic dilemma of many industries . This is also the case in the quality control department of a French manufacturer of plastic caps . Reliably detecting cracks and microcracks on plastic caps in 40 different colours and shades running at high speed on a production line is a real challenge . APREX Solutions from Nancy , France has successfully achieved this goal with the help of image processing technology and artificial intelligence . The basic images are provided by a USB 3 industrial camera from IDS Imaging Development Systems GmbH .
SOLOCAP is a subsidiary of La Maison Mélan Moutet , “ flavour conditioner since 1880 ” and manufactures all types of plastic caps for the food sector at its 26 FDPP - www . fdpp . co . uk industrial site in Contrexéville . Among them , a top-class screw cap suitable for any glass or PET bottle . Thanks to a clampable lamella ring arranged around the bottle collar , it enables simple , fast , absolutely tight and secure seal . However , the slats must be reliably and extremely carefully checked for cracks , tears and twists during production . This is the only way to guarantee absolute tightness .
The APREX inspection system checks plastic caps for defects running at high speed on a production line
The previous inspection system could not meet these high requirements . APREX Solutions realised the new solution with artificial intelligence individually on the basis of in-house software algorithms . The necessary specifications were developed in advance in cooperation with the customer . This also included several inspection stages , one of which , for example , was the reject control to avoid false reports . The introduction took place in two phases :
First , the specific “ SOLOCAP application ” was trained with the help of the intelligent APREX Track AI solution . The software includes various object detector , classifier and standard methods that operate at different levels . Networked accordingly , they ultimately deliver the desired result tailored to the customer . Four control levels with several test points guarantee a reliability rate of over 99.99 %.
In the second step , this application was implemented in the production