Manufacturers rely on machine vision cameras to monitor processes and ensure product quality. While for some processes, a visual camera provides the coverage needed to detect errors, often the visual spectrum is simply not enough. For example, visual cameras cannot see that an injection mold is not hot enough to form the product correctly or that an opaque bottle has not been completely filled on the production line. Even simple automated pick-and-place tasks can face challenges if the product a robotic arm is supposed to pick up is the same color as the background behind it.
In these cases, thermographic cameras can be a practical solution. These cameras detect heat by infrared radiation and use it to create an image, with different colors representing temperatures throughout the scene. When pointed at a line of opaque bottles, such a camera will immediately show which one is not completely full.
A thermal camera pointed at a roll of paper on a production line can help verify that it is heating and drying evenly across the roll.
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It can even help prevent accidents, such as a customer delivering a keg of beer still filled with cleaning fluid (lye) instead of beer. Since the temperature of a keg of beer with lye is considerably higher than one with beer, continuous monitoring of temperatures makes it easier to avoid mistakes.
A fixed-mount thermal imager, such as the FLIR A50/A70 advanced transmission thermal imaging camera, can repeatedly and accurately illustrate the thermal patterns and gradients needed to help quality control engineers find and correct errors on the production line, preventing defective products from being released.
This system can measure temperatures from -20 °C to 1000 °C (-40 °F to 3632 °F) with an accuracy of up to ±2 °C (±3.6 °F). It is compatible with GigE Vision and GenlCam for camera control and transmission of thermal/visual images over Ethernet to third-party machine vision applications. The A50/A70 series offers two pixel resolutions (464 × 348 or 640 × 480) and a range of fields of view (29°, 51° or 95°) on fixed targets that you manually focus for consistent viewing. When paired with the optional integrated visual camera, the A50/A70 can produce FLIR's patented MSX® images that can be easily interpreted.
Click to learn more about FLIR A50-A70 Imaging Transmission Cameras or contact a FLIR expert for more information.
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