Do you know every production manager's worst nightmare? It's errors – or even stoppages – during the production process. On-site disruptions are often combined with great frustration and high costs. Therefore it is important to determine the cause as quickly as possible and to eliminate it with certainty. To this end, PCO AG's engineers have come up with something clever, i.e. a special type of inspection system – one that's mobile and hyperfast. It resides in a special case, has its own energy supply via storage batteries and can be transported and implemented directly at the suspected source of error.



Despite brisk speeds: spotting errors
Discovering disruptions is often not easy, especially if a fast production process is involved, and the human eye is forced to capitulate – such as in paper production. With brisk speeds of around 33 meters per second, the paper webs whip through rolling mills and press works, over drying cylinders, through the calendar and, finally, onto the bearing rolls. What happens in this situation is that something gets stuck or the machines don't run smoothly. In such cases the observational capacity of a technical specialist on-site is insufficient because a human being can only differentiate up to 16 individual pictures per second. On the other hand, the artificial eye of the Turbo Inspector can achieve over 1000. The special case also contains a heavy-duty, 10-Bit CMOS camera, the pco.1200 hs. Dr. Gerhard Holst, Director of Research and Development for PCO AG, learned that “For applications with high picture rates the CMOS technology with sensor chips has proven itself; meanwhile CCD chips can't keep up.“ At a resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels the nimble eye inspects at 636 images per second, and in VGA-resolution even 1357 images, all without any trouble. Primary storage of 4 GB stands ready to utilize. The camera communicates via a FireWire interface (IEEE 1394) with an integrated tablet PC in the case as the processing unit. With the heavy-duty camera pco.1200 hs, the technical specialist is now in a position to film sequences during production and then later review the movements clearly in slow-motion mode, analyzing what is going wrong.
Eliminate errors quickly, avoid costs
“Wherever fast sequences of events are involved,“ said Research Director Dr. Holst, “our mobile inspector finds its niche. Above all it is intended for mobile, on-site error tracing.“ For example, analysis of vehicle crash tests places a great challenge on the abilities of a camera system. High image rates reveal interesting details of the impact sequence and help designers to improve vehicle safety. The Turbo Inspector can also provide helpful services in the bottling plant of a brewery. A stoppage can occur when tilted bottles cause a jam, or else perhaps one of the many grasping mechanisms wears out, putting the assignments out of alignment. If one implements the Turbo Inspector, an additional, major advantage presents itself -- as a result of the recorded picture sequences, the product puts on-site technical personnel in the position of illustrating the problem to the mechanical engineer's service team in a clearer and more detailed manner. The result is: a reaction can take place significantly quicker, which can save enormous costs. Finally the production manager can once again get his well-deserved, peaceful rest!