BIC NZ, a subsidiary of the BIC Group (Paris, France;www.bicworld.com), produces pens in New Zealand but also exports to Mexico, Chile, Australia, Canada, and the USA. Its felt-tip-pen assembly machine, customized in-house by BIC NZ, produces about 15 million pens per year.
The machine has an excellent yield, but occasionally pen tips split during insertion, or parts are fed incorrectly. BIC was relying on manual control by operators to monitor quality, but at high production speeds guaranteeing consistent product quality had been difficult.
BIC commissioned ControlVision (Auckland, NZ; www.controlvision.co.nz) to provide an automated inspection solution that uses two Cognex (Natick, MA, USA; www.cognex.com) In-Sight 5100 vision sensors-one for tip inspection and one for end-plug inspection. Special-purpose LED-based lighting was chosen for each imaging task.
The vision sensors interface via digital I/O to an Omron (Auckland, NZ; www.omron-ap.co.nz) PLC, which controls the machine and rejects any failed parts. A touch-screen panel PC, running MicrosoftWindows XP and Cognex In-Sight Explorer software, acts as both the operator and programmer interface. Inspection results can be viewed via a Web browser or loaded into Excel for offline analysis.
Bernie Jamieson, manufacturing manager at BIC NZ, says, "As a small plant we suffer from economies of scale compared to the larger plants offshore. We've looked at this technology before, but this time the price-performance is at a level where we can justify the investment."
