Image Processing on a Plate
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> Image processing on a plate application story > porcelain manufacture > Intelligent DVT camera in use for automated porcelain crockery manufacture Every year, some 1.2 million porcelain plates for the domestic and catering sectors leave the factory of the long-established manu- facturer Rosenthal which is based in Selb/Germany and forms part of the world's largest supplier of tableware, Waterford Wedgwood plc. An intelligent DVT camera represents one of the key compo- nents of an Iso press system that employs a revolutionary plate manufacturing procedure and is setting new standards in terms of speed and automation. The saying "I like what I see" seems to ring true for this manufac- turer of high-quality crockery: generously sized china plates and dishes, of the sort that are being increasingly used for innovative and creative food presentations, now number amongst the best- selling products in this sector. System overview "Some two years ago, in view of the booming sales of these pro- ducts, we decided to invest in a completely new system that ope- "The main advantage of this so-called Iso press procedure is the rates completely automatically and permits considerably higher high manufacturing speed it offers," explains Reuer: "Whereas manufacturing speeds," says engineer Joachim Reuer, production with slip as the starting material using the conventional procedure, manager in Rosenthal's Rothbühl factory in Selb. Nowadays, the we were able to manufacture about 180 items per shift, the system successfully installed system uses the Iso press procedure in which now produces approximately 220 blank plates per hour from the the clay, previously used in the form of a liquid slip as the raw ma- molded granulate and is therefore some 10 times faster!". Accor- terial for the high-pressure molding procedure has been replaced ding to Reuer, this innovative procedure has further advantages by a special press granulate. This granulate is injected into a mold such as its high precision and the lower number of rejects: "While, where it is compacted under a pressure of approximately 300 bar in the past, we needed to manufacture 150 blanks to get 100 good to form the blank plate. products, this figure has now sunk to 130." > Intelligent and fully automatic "As far as the further processing of the blank plates is concerned, baked at a temperature of 900 °C. To ensure the high quality of the the high manufacturing speed was one of the reasons that promp- end products, it is essential that the tolerances, which demand a ted us to employ image processing to assist in the subsequent pro- precision in the order of tenths of millimeters, are not exceeded cess stage," adds engineer Andreas Rother, an electrical engineer during the grinding and cleaning process. working for Sama Maschinenbau GmbH in Weißenstadt, Germany, who designed the complete system and accompanied it through to "To automate these processes at the required level of precision the commissioning stage. using robots, we needed to introduce an intermediate station at which the robots could grip the plates in a precisely defined man- For production reasons, the edges of the blank plates have a mold ner," continues Rother. edge that first has to be course ground and then finely cleaned with a sponge before the plate is transported to the kiln to be This is where, in the words of the Sama employee, image proces- sing had a role to play: "On the one hand, mechanical centering facts mechanisms would not have permitted the necessary degree of precision and, on the other, they would have demanded excessive- Industrial sector: Porcelain crockery manufacture ly long setup times on any switchover to another of the 60 or so Task: Positioning plate forms currently manufactured. Consequently, we considered Hardware: DVT SmartImage Sensor 600 an image processing system to be the best way of implementing a Software: Framework versatile, fast, high-precision positioning unit at low cost." www.stemmer-imaging-group.com germany • united kingdom • france • switzerland > Image processing on a plate > Robotic data in a few milliseconds "The blank plates are conveyed to the control station by means of a suction mechanism and deposited there," says Rother as he describes the flow of materials. At the heart of this station lies a DVT Series 600 SmartImage sensor which is mounted above a pla- te discharge area. This intelligent camera takes a picture of the area, illuminated by four spotlights, which is then processed directly in the camera by the integrated FrameWork software. This DVT software possesses numerous useful image processing algorithms such as Blob analysis, object recognition, color image processing and many other tools. The functions required in any given situation can be selected without difficulty, thus permitting the highly efficient parameterization of the entire system. The results of the evaluation carried out by this application consist The intelligent DVT Series 600 camera calculates the plate's positional offset. of the precise X and Y positions of the plate together with its angle of rotation and are available within a few milliseconds. The camera gram. This controller provides the three downstream Mitsubishi determines the position of the item and uses this to calculate the 6-axis robots with the correction data they require in order to grip correction data for the robot. the plates on the circular table. "Because the plates are always loca- ted in an identical position at the robot arm thanks to the correc- While a second suction mechanism takes up the previously ana- tion data, the robots can always execute the same program for the lyzed plate and deposits it on a stepping circular table, the camera current plate type," explains Rother as he describes the advantages is already communicating the precise correction data for the robot of this procedure. "No further corrections have to be factored into via an interface to a controller running a memory-resident pro- the programmed grinding and cleaning movements." > Image processing is crucial The Sama engineer knows that the performance of the employed "When new forms are introduced, we can partially derive the ne- image processing system is decisive for the quality of the manufac- cessary robot trajectories from the CAD drawings of the plates. To tured plates from his own painful experience: "At the start of this teach the camera the new plate type, we simply need to present it project, we knew very little about image processing and we initially with the general contour in order to switch over production." This chose another manufacturer's intelligent camera to perform this means that it is possible to change to a new plate type, including task. However, during the implementation phase, it became clear retooling, within two hours. that this image processing system had difficulty in recognizing the range of plate forms despite week-long testing and all the manu- Rosenthal's positive experiences with the existing system have since facturer's attempts to support the system." encouraged the manufacturer to install a second Iso press manu- facturing line. "The new system will have a similar structure to the Rother was finally able to solve the problem when he phoned initial version. As far as image processing is concerned, we will make STEMMER IMAGING in Puchheim: "Once we had given them a pre- use of the DVT 600's successor, that is to say a DVT 500 camera," cise description of the application on the basis of a few pictures, Rothar says enthusiastically as he speaks about Sama's next job. they advised us to use the DVT camera. Using this camera, we were able to get the system operating successfully in just a few days!" According to Rosenthal's production manager Reuer, the comple- Rother was particularly impressed by the fact that he could set up tion of the second system will result in a further increase in the and test new plate forms at STEMMER IMAGING via the Internet. overall level of automation: "In the near future, the two stations will be linked to permit automatic throughput through to kiln stage." "Since we started, we have stored approximately 60 plate forms in It is possible that by then a second image processing system will be the programmable controller, with the result that we can change operational to check the manufacturer's stamp on the underside of between production runs extremely quickly," continues Rothar. the products. www.stemmer-imaging-group.com germany • united kingdom • france • switzerland > Image processing on a plate > Wide range of applications These Rosenthal applications are simply an example of the tasks that can be accomplished using intelligent cameras. Further possi- bilities will soon open up in almost every sector of the production industry. The DVT sales partner in Germany, the Puchheim-based STEMMER IMAGING GmbH, has been able to gather wide-ranging experience during the recent years. Among its services, STEMMER IMAGING offers interested parties free training to help them access the world of image processing and take advantage of the opportunities provided by DVT products. our partner dvt In the early nineties, researchers at the US Georgia Institute of Tech- Three Mitsubishi 6-axis robots take up the plates using the corrected position nology were working on an innovative image processing concept in data and then grind and clean these to a tolerance of 0.1 mm. which the CCD sensor was directly connected to the processor. This made it possible to produce very compact, high-performance, low- cost cameras. This development resulted in the creation of the company DVT, set up to market the new technology. This company then also developed the FrameWork software platform. This complements the DVT hardware by turning it into a low-cost system that users can operate without the need for any extensive knowledge of image processing.