One of Europe’s leading biscuit manufacturers asked Identify Direct/Machine Vision Technology to provide an automated vision solution to ensure their biscuits were of an even size.
One of Europe’s leading biscuit manufacturers asked us to provide an automated vision solution to ensure their biscuits were of an even size. The factory needs to make the ‘sandwich biscuit’ the correct overall height, as any deviation in the size of a stack of biscuits, even if each just a mm out, would result in several mm difference which would then fail in the wrapping process. The main objective of the biscuit manufacturer is to achieve economic production, be smart with the resources and packaging. They need to react quickly and reliably on disturbances in the production process by means of data and experience from the past. Therefore, process data has to be acquired and stored continuously and must be efficiently accessed on demand.
We were asked to automate the size and the weight control of the biscuits during the production process. Two of the biscuits are then combined with a filling resulting in a ‘sandwich biscuit’. The ultimate aim is to ensure all ‘sandwich biscuits’ are the same height and weight. A biscuit consists of two ‘sides’ with a fondant filling in-between. The factory needs to measure each side of the biscuit to then know how much filling is required
We approached MultiPix Imaging, a UK vision components supplier, for advice on Camera and Image Processing Software selection, and came up with a solution consisting of three Basler Scout cameras to grab images of the biscuits from above and HALCON Imaging Software to analyse the image to measure the length and width and then ascertain if the biscuit is the correct size. A fourth camera was used in partial scan mode for higher frame rates, grabbing a laser line profile of the biscuit. HALCON Imaging Software constructs a 3D image and obtains accurate height measurements. Using this procedure, accuracies of ± 0.17 mm regarding the length measurement, ± 0.17 mm regarding the width measurement and ± 0.17 mm regarding the thickness can be achieved.
The custom front end of the software incorporates an average size display for the measurement over the last 100 rows. These statistics are stored against time and date for four years to satisfy customer traceability demands. The operator can easily select from a drop-down menu for product changeover. All this information is available on a duplicate screen display 100 meters away for monitoring by an engineer. Thus, GigE is the ideal interface for this application.
Machine Vision Technology is an MVTec Certified Integration Partner. Identify Direct Ltd is part of Machine Vision Technology. All product names, trademarks and images of the products/trademarks are copyright by their holders. All rights reserved.
