News in brief

TTN-T, a node in  the European HPCN Technology Transfer Network, is organising a one-day workshop at Automation'99 seminar and exhibition on Wednesday, September 15, 1999 in Helsinki Fair Centre. TTN-T and German Partners will present selected advanced solutions in industrial automation, quality control and inspection as results from actual European technology application projects.   

Workshop agenda:  

TBZ-PARIV GmbH Chemnitz:  

• APS Advanced Parallel System - efficient High Performance LINUX based PC-Cluster with Finite Element Parallel Package  

• New Developments in Optical 3D-Measurement Techniques 

• New Developments of Coating Substrate Systems (Cutting and Forming Tools) - supported by Parallel Finite Element Computations,  
• Fast Characterisation of Surfaces by means of coherent Laser Light - a Challenge for in-process quality control and 
• Quality Control of Precision Tools by means of Image Processing 

• High dynamical parallel structured Machine Tools and Handling Techniques  

• Advanced Serial Bus-Systems in Industrial Automation  

Vision Systems has been invited to participate in Machine Vision Partner-program by Siemens Industrial Automation, Germany. This is a worldwide program and the number of MV partners participating is continuously increasing. The target of the program is to help in marketing of MV  
technology and to make it a remarkable part of automation projects. An intranet-network is built-up between all Siemens sales offices and the participants within this program. This network enables a wide range of co-operation between the parties. In Finland Vision Systems Oy represents Siemens MV products like Simatic VS710 Profibus-cameras and Videomat MV systems.  

Sense the true movement, fast and slow   

CCD Photonics Ltd have developed a simple, cost-effective device for monitoring the true movement  of various objects. The system consists of a laser diode equipped with line-generating cylindrical optics and of a linear- type CCD detector, which senses the actual position of the laser beam crossing the detector. The number of sensing elements is up to 8000 pixels having the spacing of 7 micrometers. This resolution is available in numerical form and also as an analogue voltage (12-bit resolution) with the sampling frequency of 1.25 kHz. This DC- type vibration sensor is useful in monitoring the effects of pressure shocks in industrial tubing. The system has also been used in measuring the movement of various gliding machine parts or the longitudinal shape of railroad rails at insulated junctions.  

Machine vision controls the quality of plastic consumer parts   

Orbis Oy builds test systems for companies in consumer electronic industry. Customers require that high quality products passing functional tests have to be visually defect-free as well. Plastic covers are important parts of the visual attractiveness of the products. Orbis Oy collected information from plastic parts manufacturers about the defect types and developed quality control cell that controls surfaces, printing and possible transparent areas. Typical defect types are e. g. scratches, white and black spots and printing defects. Orbis Oy has expanded its international operations and has offices outside Finland in Sweden, Estonia and USA.  

Colour vision system sorts household garbage bags   

Combination of powerful real-time image processing and true-colour line-scan cameras offers huge  
opportunities to a wide scale of applications from identification, sorting and grading to process  
control. One of the new more exotic MV applications is inX-Matic, a sorting system for household  
garbage bags. Although inX-Matic has an unlimited sorting capacity, the mechanical sorting,  
however, limits the processing capacity to 600 garbage bags per minute. Processing of the image  
data and control of the process takes place in an intelligent, ultra-fast multi-channel  processing system iCAM that has been designed especially for complex, real-time MV applications.  
The iCAM is built for applications, where intelligence, power and reliability are required. inX  
System offers just a true-colour vision system or a complete sorting system with vision and  
mechanical handling in collaboration with his partners.  

Flexible machine vision toolbox  

RTS Cheos Ltd has introduced a new MV tool concept for general MV applications. Special options  
like integration to industrial robots, dedicated quality control applications, pick-and-place  
solutions and statistical process control features, are examples of its versatility. The toolbox  
is targeted for industrial production and system automation integrators, robot integrators, OEM  
MV developers and end-users.  

The platform is very easily configured for literally any application. The hardware platform is  
based upon Windows NTTM operating system, PCI-bus and Pentium-family of CPUs. The box can be equipped with any camera and corresponding frame grabber and digitizer. Further standard features  are integrated display, keyboard, mouse, Ethernet card, and hard disk and CD-ROM station. The  
modular software platform and the user-interface are easily adapted and configurable by the user.