If you are looking to improve automation at your business, machine vision systems are a powerful tool. In a wide variety of industries, including logistics, manufacturing, and assembly, machine vision systems can give you the tools to automate many parts of the process to help you save money and improve productivity. Properly employed, machine vision systems can dramatically increase your profitability.
At FOVEOS, we are dedicated to helping each of our clients maximize their benefit from our products, including machine vision systems. You won’t just be talking to salespeople, you’ll have access to engineers who can design custom solutions as necessary for your business. That’s part of our Adaptive Systems Approach™, and it helps us ensure that you will get a machine vision system that is ideally suited to your needs.
How can machine vision systems increase the profitability of your operations? They can take over many of the evaluation and judgment tasks we used to believe required human monitoring. In fact, they can do many of these tasks better: more reliably and at a faster pace.
Some of the tasks you might give to machine vision systems include:
During our Adaptive Systems Approach™, we can talk to you about the functions you’re hoping to get out of your machine vision systems. It’s possible to achieve multiple goals simultaneously or set up a system that can easily switch between different functions depending on your processes.
Typically, machine vision systems perform their task in a three-step process:
First, the items to be evaluated will present themselves to the camera. This usually means coming along a conveyor belt, but it might mean falling through chutes or another delivery method. However, it’s important that the staging process be uniform or at least predictable. The items to be evaluated should also be illuminated properly and dependent on the operation. Finally the imaging system needs to be triggered. This can be accomplished with a timer internal to the imaging system or by the addition of a number of types of sensors.
Once the items to be evaluated are properly staged, the camera will image the items, sending these images to the processor.
Then the processor will evaluate the product according to its programmed standards. If the items pass standards, they are sent along. If not, they are dealt with according to the instructions you give the system. Commonly, they’re put aside for further inspection, but they could easily be sent to recycling or another department, depending on the needs of your operation.
At FOVEOS we commonly install three different types of machine vision systems:
An industrial camera and PC arrangement uses a GigE or USB3 connected camera linked to a standard computer. The computer runs the evaluation software, and doesn’t have to be dedicated to the function.
An industrial camera can also be GigE or USB3 linked to a dedicated vision processor, essentially an industrial computer. Industrial computers are designed to hold up better under the rigors of the factory setting, which means they can last longer despite the conditions on the factory floor, including dust, heat, etc.
In addition to the three basic configurations we discussed above, FOVEOS can help you customize your system still further to make sure it’s ideally suited to the functions you need it to perform.
In order to do this, we can customize many aspects of the system, including the:
FOVEOS offers numerous camera options. Our cameras are all industry-leading options; From made in Japan, high quality integrated vision cameras to standard industrial cameras.
Lenses can be customized to ensure proper focus on the items for inspection. Single-focus lenses work quickly if staging presents objects at a reasonably uniform distance. Autofocus lenses can deal with objects presented at variable distances and zoom lenses mean that the camera can be placed at even larger distances or focus on smaller features.
Lighting can make a big difference in a machine vision system’s ability to evaluate certain aspects of products, packages, and parts. FOVEOS offers customizable lighting solutions to make sure that the illumination in your evaluation area is providing the best results.
While you might sometimes run your machine vision software on a PC you have for other purposes, you might get better results with a dedicated processor. This is especially true if your inspection tasks require complex software. We can provide you with our off the shelf solutions or write custom software for your application.
When you contact some companies, you will talk to a salesperson who is interested in selling you a machine vision system in a box. It does what it does, and it might work for you, if you rebuild your processes around the way it works.
At FOVEOS, our Adaptive Systems Approach™ means that we always find a system that adapts to you, not one that forces you to adapt to it. We start by listening to your problems and talking to you about the kinds of goals you have for your new process. Then we will talk to you about the options for achieving these goals. We even have custom engineering capabilities, so that if there isn’t currently a solution for what you want to do, we can design one.
When you talk to FOVEOS, you don’t just talk to a salesperson, you can have access to our engineers. They speak your language, and they can cut right to the crux of the issue and get to work on the complicated heart of the problem. You’ll be happy with the way we work not just to solve today’s problems but anticipate tomorrow’s problems so you know your system will be able to adapt and grow as your business does.