Bottling inspection guaranteed by vision

Customer satisfaction is a decisive factor in the face of tough competition in the brewery business. Ottakringer Brauerei (Vienna, Austria; www.ottakringer.com) needed to guarantee that packaging units contained the full number of defect-free products to prevent customer complaints. Ottakringer contacted the image-processing department of Schmachtl (Linz, Austria; www.schmachtl.at), which determined production automation needs and priorities. To allow the brewery to develop an in-house solution, Schmachtl provided a test unit based on a Checker 101 vision sensor from Cognex (Natick, MA, USA; www.cognex.com), along with advice, giving the brewery's maintenance team the flexibility to set up the checking station themselves.

Initially, each box of cans was passed along a conveyor belt equipped with the sensor to determine whether it contained 24 correctly inserted cans before the box is shrink-wrapped. Based on improved production flow of the cans, the next step was to introduce a completeness check on beer crates. The system now automatically adjusts to different product lines, checking whether an 18-, 20-, or 24- bottle crate is on the line. The checking station operates on a two- to three-shift-per-day basis and inspects beer crates at a rate of approximately one per second.