Automatic inspection

In recent years, the awareness and implementation of automatic inspection and process control in the packaging market has increased dramatically, driven by the growing demand for better product quality, and the high pressure on margins and cost reduction. The impressive growth of automatic inspection installations is a direct result of the proven benefits of the basic automatic inspection capabilities and the additional powerful capabilities these systems offer, such as press control and a complete quality assurance workflow.

Unlike a simple viewer system that only views a captured image on a monitor, the basic purpose of an automatic inspection system (AIS) is to detect print defects and quality variations during the production run. This enables corrective activities before producing waste (Process Control) and empowers the printer to remove defective material before shipment (Quality Assurance).

The new generation of AIS supports a variety of printing technologies and any type of job, substrate or workflow. The inspection system can be equipped with area cameras (such as AVT’s PV/Jupiter for process control), 100 per cent LCCD cameras (the PV/Apollo for 100 per cent quality assurance), or a combination of both technologies - such as the PV/Argus system.

One user who has adopted all the different technologies is Huhtamaki Consumer Flexibles Ronsberg, in Germany. This site was one of the first rotogravure printers of flexible packaging to use the new generation Print Vision/Jupiter system.

“The PrintVision/Jupiter is taking automatic inspection and quality control one step further with its improved defect detection capabilities, new on-line colour measurement, and enhanced quality management tools,” says Peter Ganz, process engineer at Huhtamaki Ronsberg. “AVT systems have been vital to our growth, enabling us to push our efficiency further, visibly improve print quality, and reduce production waste.”

By detecting process defects early in the process, AIS can reduce run time material waste by as much as 50 per cent. Calculating the typical annual savings leads to hundreds of thousand of dollars of savings. In addition, with automatic inspection monitoring print quality, printers run their presses faster. Increasing speed by 20-30 per cent is a typical result in high quality flexible packaging operations.

The flexibility of the automatic inspection platform enables adding extra process control capabilities. AVT’s Prestige, for example, can perform makeready tasks in parallel to the other automatic inspection tasks; the Register Control module for automatic register pre-setting and control; and the Pressure Control module for automatic plate and anilox pressure pre-setting and control. Having all the quality data available in a central database, printers can manage the quality assurance along the production workflow automatically and more efficiently, and gain new levels of communicating job quality with their customers.

Machine vision based automatic inspection and press control benefits printers by creating a regime of quality assurance and efficient press and process control that delivers results straight to the bottom line. AIS has been implemented at sites such as Huhtamaki Consumer Flexibles Ronsberg and hundreds of other printers worldwide, and is a strategic asset to maintain competitiveness for the coming years.