Recently, a large contract pharmaceutical packager faced the challenge of how to light multiple inspection systems for a wide variety highly reflective pharmaceutical and medical packages.
The company’s products come in a variety of colors and product formats such as two color capsule, single color capsule, transparent gel capsules, semi-transparent gel capsules, round tablets, oval tablets, and more. These products are packaged on multiple blister packaging lines that handle a myriad of package formats such as flat foil, pocketed foil, lined foil, cardboard, paper. The company was struggling with a variety of different lights from various manufacturers to find a “one light fits all” solution that would work well with these variables. The challenge was to find a light architecture that would provide a completely even light approach from all axes for the packaging line scan cameras
The company turned to Smart Vision Lights, a leading designer and manufacturer of high-brightness LED lights for industrial applications, including machine vision to find a solution. The Smart Vision Lights TL305 product was the proposed light solution to resolve the company’s challenge. The TL305 light delivers an intense amount of light from an On-Axis architecture that is supplemented by an array of Off-Axis illumination. The light is designed to supplement direct lighting with matching intensity of a diffused architecture. The overall effect is an extremely intense and diffused multi-dimensional light solution, delivering the perfect balance to accomplish for the customer what no light on the market had delivered to date.
Vision systems retrofitted with the TL305 are delivering better images and more robust inspections, reduced “hot spots” and glare, provide better imagery on gel caps and increasing the color response of the camera. The challenge of multi-colored products is also now less of a concern, since this new light has eliminated halo reflection and blurred edge contrast, according to the customer.
Smart Vision Lights also provided separate intensity control for multi-axis’ of light. This control has allowed the customer to successfully implement numerous cameras for inspection on multiple processing lines for products ranging from clear, brown, and opaque containers, and for products varying in formats, colors and hues.