Automatic Optical Inspection Ensuring Label Accuracy

Robust Compact IPC Excellence to Support AOI plus Motion Control

Project Description

Accurate labeling is essential for today’s food, beverage or pharmaceutical packaging, as mislabeling would pose threat to customer health and safety and usually result in costly product recalls and associated law suits.

However, many of the world’s packaging facilities still rely heavily on human inspection which is likely to miss labeling errors when manual inspections fail to keep up with production line speeds.

Human inspection becomes inefficient and costly in today’s globalized business world considering that, for example, a European pharmaceutical manufacturer operates many production bases around the world which proceed over 300,000 medication packaging in total per day and need to maintain quality consistency.

Therefore, more and more manufacturers are using IPC-based automatic inspection system for more accurate, reliable and cost-saving label inspection and quality control. Good IP connectivity is also a requirement to enable remote monitoring from administration offices and business headquarters that might locate as far as at the other end of the Earth to establish product traceability and electronic pedigree.

Requirements

•  2 expansion slots
•  Including a high speed PCIe x 16 interface for frame-grabber
•  Compact size for built-in system
•  IP connectivity to link with corporate network
•  Fully validated system

System

A typical label inspection solution with higher automatic degree includes a vision system connected to digital cameras that detect missing or torn labels, or, if set up with OCR and/or OCV software, recognize and/or verify label content, and a motion system connected to robotic arm(s) that will take products with mislabeling off the line for correction.

Advantech AIMC-3200 is a robust and compact IPC platform suited for such vision plus motion applications, a bare bone system that can be configured according to customer’s needs with an array of compatible processors, hard disks and memories of different grade for options (CPU options range from 1.6GHz to 3.4GHz, dual or quad core).

Two expansion slots are provided, including 1 PCIe x 16 for frame grabber card to connect with up to 4 digital cameras and 1 PCIe x 4 for motion card to enable robotic applications or for connection with another automatic device. All I/O interfaces provisioned on the system are fully tested and validated to ensure compatibility with major brands of peripherals in the marketplace.

The AIMC-3200 comes in a form factor as small as a set-top box, which can be installed easily and neatly at production line as an embedded system with great space efficiency.

Yet it does not compromise computing performance and graphic performance: it supports Intel 2 or 4 core processors with a speed range up to 3.4 GHz (Intel○R Core i7), and with Advantech’s industrial-grade thermal design it delivers rich graphic features without getting overheated.

The whole AIMC families are certified with CE/FCC and UL/CB to meet international safety requirements including electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and explosion-proof. Ergonomic considerations are also put in our product designs to ensure more convenient and safer maintenance, such as round angle design of edges and removable top cover to facilitate easy access to swap HDD. All these features andvalidations come in a product only available with Advantnech.

Conclusion
For today’s manufacturers whose product distribution seems to be going global, IPC-based automatic product and label inspection is absolutely needed for quality production with electronic traceability. The Advantech AIMC-3200 is suitable for those who seek to reduce cost, improve quality and ensure accuracy in their packaging process in order to meet with increased customer expectations.

For more simplified or complicated applications associated with factory or machinery automation the AIMC series provides an array of bare-bone products with differentiated I/O richness to facilitate system development with greatest flexibility.

The AIMC, abbreviated from Advantech Intelligent Micro Computer, is unique not only because of its small form factor, but also many compelling features and benefits it delivers to maximize our customers’ convenience, comfort, cost-efficiency and market competiveness.