Product category:
Vision and Colour Sensors
News Release from: Omron Electronics | Subject: F10 mini vision sensor
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 29 June 2000
Vision sensor helps label 70,000 bottles
per hour
When German brewers Emil Petersen GmbH and Co needed to ensure its bottle labels were applied correctly, the Omron F10 mini vision advanced sensor proved to be an ideal, cost effective and accurate so
When German brewers Emil Petersen GmbH and Co needed to ensure its bottle labels were applied correctly, the Omron F10 mini vision advanced sensor proved to be an ideal, cost effective and accurate solution Founded in 1888 the Flensburg-based brewery is responsible for producing the full-bodied 'Flensburger Pilsner', the German market leader in bottled beer
Since its inception, the company has brewed its premium products according to the strict German purity regulations of 1516, and currently has an annual output of around 55,000,000 litres.
In order to increase efficiency at the brewery, a complete automation system was installed in 1999 under the supervision of Werner Sauer, technical Director at Emil Petersen.
Using two Krones production machines set up in a mirror configuration, Emil Petersen were able to expand output capability to 70,000 bottles per hour.
One particular constituent of the new Krones machines, the Multimatic is responsible for receiving the beer bottles once they have been packed, cleaned, filled and sealed with a plastic stopper.
The Multimatic is then responsible for both labelling the bottles and applying a wire clamp over the stopper to ensure it does not discharge under the build up of pressure in the bottle, this also ensure the bottle is in pristine condition.
Each bottle enters the Multimatic, is fed into a forty -bottle capacity magazine and placed on a separate plate in such a way that the clamp faces in one of two orientations.
These plates are equipped with a servo motor providing the means for 360deg rotation to accurately position each bottle prior to labelling, two retro-reflective sensors are used to recognise the orientation of the clamp on the bottleneck.
Each bottle must be in exactly the right position to ensure uniform labelling; to do this each sealing clamp must be accurately located and identified.
Previously, proximity switches were used for this purpose, but the introduction of a new refined steel clamp material meant that the sensing distance was reduced, resulting in mechanical problems.
Further experiments with the latest sensor technology, such as laser displacement sensors repeated resulted in errors with label positioning.
The main problems were extraneous light impinging on the sensors, different bottle pressure caused by different sealing rings and also, surprisingly, the amount of foam present in the bottle.
The solution came in the form of the Omron F10 pattern matching advanced sensor which has the capability of recognising the position of the clamp and compensating for errors, cost effectively.
The F10 is a compact and low cost pattern matching advanced sensor, consisting of two parts; firstly the camera head, which projects the area which is taught to the sensor and the area in which the sensor searches for the taught image and secondly; the evaluation unit which receives the resulting readings and gives a yes/no output.
The F10 projects the measurement window over the bottle neck area containing the clamp and compares this with the 'good' pattern taught by the user.
If the F10 determine The clamp is in the correct position, the bottle will not rotate and the label will be successfully placed.
If however, the sensor does not detect the clamp, the bottle will be rotated until the F10 identifies the correct pattern after which labelling is executed, the F10 is triggered by an Integral Rotary Shaft Encoder.
The F10 has an inbuilt light source and consequently is unaffected by extraneous light interference.
Furthermore the F110 features an easy teach function (also available remotely), which enables fast and simple installation and implementation and typical evaluation times are only 3.6ms for a normal field scan and 10.8ms for a wide field scan. Request a free brochure from Omron Electronics ...
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