Sherlock Teledyne

[Bran Bast]

Foodprocessing and packaging operations can be massive. Unilever (London, United Kingdom; www.unilever.com) enlisted Kibele-PIMS (İzmir & İstanbul, Turkey; www.kibele-pims.com) to automate the palletization and packaging processes within the Knorr (Heilbronn, Germany; www.knorr.com) and Lipton (Bruxelles, Belgium; www.lipton.com) production facilities in Besan, Turkey. Unilever needed a vision system to transition from a manual sorting system and to read, inspect, and send food packages to the correct lines for palletization. The overall automation system includes the machine vision systems on the lines as well as robots for palletization. Kibele-PIMS turned to Teledyne DALSA (Waterloo, ON, Canada; www.teledynedalsa.com) for the vision system.

According to Erdal Başaraner, Managing Director at Kibele-PIMS, the company solved the problem in two stages, with palletization being the second stage. He adds that the vision systems employed at these locations allowed Kibele-PIMS to join the robotics and vision control system together.

On the Knorr line, a box arrives at one of 17 stations where the three KUKA robots installed on linear axes place them on pallets. The completed pallets move past two additional cameras used to record the number of pallets, expiration dates, and the type of product. This information goes to a labeling machine that prints the associated transport labels, attaches them to the pallets, and releases them for shipment. Additionally, the system transfers this information to an ERP system.

The Knorr line has four GEVA 312T industrial image processing PCs (the Lipton line has three) equipped with Sherlock vision application software specifically designed to simplify the design and deployment of automated inspection on the factory floor. The GEVA-312T (Figure 3) is an integrated vision system that includes a 12-inch touch screen display, a 1.6-GHz dual-core processor, and two Gigabit Ethernet camera ports. Its form factor allows for PLCs, motion controllers, and non-vision-related components at the control panel. It is compatible with the full range of Genie cameras. Applications using one or two cameras can connect directly to the Camera/LAN ports on the unit. It can accommodate additional cameras using standard, low-cost Gigabit Ethernet switches. Interface I/O connections, including camera trigger and light strobes, use a standard PL-USB module. This module mounts inside the control panel and connects to one of the GEVA-312T USB ports (multiple PL-USB modules can be installed).

Sherlock is an advanced machine vision software interface that can be applied to a wide variety of automated inspection applications. It offers design flexibility and provides a suite of tools and capabilities that have been deployed in thousands of installations worldwide.

In addition, there were technical challenges. The main challenge was to prepare a level ground for the linear axis to work smoothly on. For this purpose, before placing the linear axis and the robots, the ground on the site had to be levelled.

Başaraner adds that because the standard environmental light conditions are not stable, there could be scenarios where the cameras might not read the QR codes, leading to the cases ending up on the wrong pallets. Installing the lights did not involve any serious challenges.

Switching to the fully automated solutions at the facility has increased profitability and decreased the number of errors in correctly packaging the food. In the new setup, boxes arrive every 1.5 seconds on average on the Knorr line and every 2 seconds on the Lipton line.

Former Editor in Chief Chris Mc Loone joined the Vision Systems Design team as editor in chief in 2021. Chris has been in B2B media for over 25 years. During his tenure at VSD, he covered machine vision and imaging from numerous angles, including application stories, technology trends, industry news, market updates, and new products.

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