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MB Dynamics, field-proven industry experts in the design, manufacture and supply of vibration test systems and equipment, including buzz, squeak and rattle (BSR), steering, and suspension component test systems; modal exciters and amplifiers; single- and multi-DUT automated accelerometer calibration systems; dynamic controllers; transducer calibration systems; and test engineering services, has announced the 1300th successful field installation of its Modal 50A exciter. With this milestone, the Modal 50A has now become MB Dynamics’ best-selling modal exciter worldwide.

The Modal 50A exciter was 100% designed and developed at the company’s own Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A.-based global corporate headquarters and R&D centre, by an in-house engineering team that is comprised of multiple 40-year global experts in modal testing. Several team members were also formerly professors at the famed University of Cincinnati Structural Dynamics Research Laboratory.

Key R&D goals for the MB Dynamics Modal 50A exciter centred around addressing the most common problems associated with the use of traditional shakers in modal testing. At the time of initial Modal 50A design, most industry modal exciters lacked portability; had complex setup and installation requirements; and exhibited certain operational accuracy deficiencies. The Modal 50A exciter therefore needed the necessary reliability and performance for support of a diverse array of modal and structural testing requirements, ranging from smaller test articles up thru mid- to full-size automobiles. MB Dynamics aimed to accomplish this versatility, while still ensuring a modal exciter which could reliably deliver 50 pounds of dynamic force.

The 1” pk-pk continuous stroke (optional 30 mm pk-pk) of the Modal 50A exciter, with 1.1” between stops, offers reliable and sufficient excitation for both flexible structures and low-frequency “suspended shaker” tests. Its lightweight (less than 0.33 lbs.) armature provides a reliable excitation source for the modal testing of small articles with minimised mass loading. A unique armature design allows for important and dramatic reductions in force drop-off at test article resonances. In addition, the Modal 50A’s broad usable frequency range, from DC to 5000 Hz, allows it to accommodate virtually any modal survey type, including multi-shaker random, single-point random, multi-point sine dwell, and burst random.

The relatively compact (11.5” x 7.5” x 9.25”) and lightweight (55 pounds inclusive of trunnion base) footprint of the Modal 50A facilitates its ease of installation within space constrained environments. The exciter, its easy-mount inertial masses, and related accessories may be easily setup and operated by a single person, including in remote locations. The trunnion base of the Modal 50A incorporates two unique hand-knobs and three screw feet, allowing for exciter adjustments to be performed at virtually any excitation angle. A quick connect/disconnect feature for additional masses is also used to provide large inertial restraint during low-frequency modal testing, while a series of quick disconnect turnbuckles allow for both adjustable suspension and ease of 6DoF positioning. Low armature axial suspension stiffness (<15 lbs./in) further ensures that Modal 50A exciter dynamics may be decoupled from the test specimen. The exciter can also drive cable lengths ranging from 30 to 100 (optional) feet.

The process of attaching the Modal 50A exciter to a test structure is simplified via streamlined onboard fixturing. This includes a centre bore clearance hole which extends through the armature, housing, trunnion base and inertial masses, and which allows for unlimited shaker positioning along the stinger axis. A collet chuck allows for the gripping of either a “one size fits all” threadless stinger or a “piano wire” stinger, in sizes from 0.020″ to 0.12″ (0.5 to 3.0 mm). Use of the “piano wire” stinger decouples force inputs in all directions except for that of the driven axis, thereby avoiding cross-axis force measurement errors. An oscillatory force of 50 pounds keeps required preloaded tension to the stinger, thereby eliminating buckling problems, while still delivering exciter peak dynamic force. These and other combined features allow the Modal 50A exciter to provide superior forcing functions, along with the virtual elimination of common measurement errors associated with bending moments, side loads, and end-user reliance on traditional stinger compression loading functionality.

Recommended optional accessories for the Modal 50A exciter, also available from MB Dynamics, include the MB500VI amplifier; an exciter system accessory kit; and the new lateral excitation test stand. The MB500VI amplifier, when used in combination with the Modal 50A exciter and as part of a seamless modal measurement system, can virtually eliminate mass loading effects on smaller test items. The accessory kit includes a full set of compatible hardware, such as chucks, turnbuckles, nuts, bolts, bolt-on masses, and wrenches for bolt-on masses and stingers, as well as a user manual and extra storage for both stingers and load cells.

In addition, the new MB Dynamics lateral excitation test stand provides versatile horizontal or vertical suspension and overall system support for the Modal 50A exciter during experimental modal surveys, including greater distributed input energy uniformity and improved signal-to-noise ratios. For more information about the Modal 50A exciter, or other modal and structural testing products and services available from MB Dynamics, please contact the company at +1-216-292-5850, sales@mbdynamics.com, or visit www.mbdynamics.com.

Heilind Electronics, a premier global distributor of electronic components, has further expanded its portfolio with the addition of products from ITT Cannon – a global market leader in the design and manufacture of harsh environment connector solutions.

The distribution agreement positions Heilind as a global partner for ITT Cannon, authorising the sale of these products in the American, European and Asian markets.

“This strategic partnership marks a major milestone for us,” said Alan Clapp, Vice-President at Heilind Electronics. “The diversity and technology behind ITT Cannon’s solutions, combined with Heilind’s strong sales support and expertise, present a wealth of new options to Hi-Rel and mil-aero customers around the world.”

Anh Phan, Vice-President of Sales & Marketing for ITT Cannon, echoed the sentiment: “From harness manufacturers to defence OEMs and medical solutions providers, this strategic engagement will equip both organisations with a deeper level of customer centricity and a robust pipeline for new, global opportunities.”

ITT Cannon’s products are designed for harsh environment applications in a variety of markets, including aerospace and defence, space, industrial, rail, medical and energy.

Endress+Hauser has announced that Eastern Controls is its exclusive authorised sales and service provider for the municipal market in Northern New Jersey and the New York City metropolitan area.

“Eastern Controls is a long time, trusted, and dedicated sales and service partner of Endress+Hauser,” says Shaun Beauchesne, Area Vice President – East Central, Endress+Hauser. “We are excited to expand our partnership which will bring new capabilities, years of experience and application know-how to customers in the municipal market. We will continue to work alongside them to deliver best-in-class service and support to our customers.”

“Eastern Controls is very excited to expand our Water and Wastewater industry presence with Endress+Hauser,” said Cliff Mclaughlin, President of Eastern Controls. “Since 1969, our team of dedicated professionals has supported the critical infrastructure of the United States of America with world class products, solutions, training, and services. We look forward to bringing our passion, along with the expertise of our manufacturing partners, to our new customers in this important industry.”

Eastern Controls has been an Endress+Hauser sales and service representative in the Northeast for almost six years in various markets. The company’s market basket of manufacturers, which includes instrumentation, valves, heat trace, and gas detection, provides a unique position for the team to solve the most complex customer challenges in the water and wastewater industry.

Details can be found at https://eh.digital/eci_www_us

Sold under the recently acquired Fozmula brand, Rochester Gauges is pleased to announce that a selection of the company’s liquid level sensors and switches are now available via the Digi-Key Marketplace.

According to John Petersen, Sales and Marketing Manager for Fozmula, this is the first time the company has offered products for sale online. “Until today, we have concentrated on building custom sensors, switches and gauges for OEMs in the power generation and vehicle engineering sectors resulting in over twenty thousand individual part numbers. We have selected the most popular of these and designed some new, customisable sensors and switches that we believe will appeal to designers working on prototypes, or low volume machines that need to monitor liquid levels in unique fuel, oil, coolant, and water tanks. The Digi-Key platform is perfect for this as it enables customers to buy individual units for immediate shipment”.

“We are excited to add Rochester Gauges to the Digi-Key Marketplace,” said David Stein, Vice President of Global Supplier Management for Digi-Key. “Rochester Gauges’ range of liquid level sensors allow us to deliver innovative solid state capacitance technology to engineers across a range of disciplines helping them solve liquid level monitoring challenges with an OEM-quality product.”

Rochester Gauges is offering a selection of capacitance type coolant and oil level switches with a choice of popular mounting threads, electrical connectors and switching options. Developed with custom tank fabricators in mind the company has also produced a capacitance type fuel level sensor that can be cut to length and calibrated by a customer’s technician. Capacitance sensors and switches are solid state, maintenance free devices. Without any moving parts to stick or jam they offer improved reliability, accuracy and repeatability when compared to the electro-mechanical alternatives.

“We’re delighted to have agreed to this valuable partnership with Digi-Key. It enables us to reach a much wider marketplace for our innovative liquid level sensors and switches. In the near future we’ll be adding a customisable feature and more products encompassing unique technologies bringing even greater choice to the customers of this exceptional online resource” added Glen MacGibbon, Rochester Gauges’ Senior VP for Sales and Marketing.

It is April 1, 1961, when an international success story begins in a small weaving mill in central Hesse – the standardization of enclosures. Rudolf Loh founds the Rittal company and changes the industry with one idea. What was initially smiled at is now a phenomenon: The standard enclosure is used in millions of product solutions in over 90 percent of all industries worldwide. Rittal is the innovation and world market leader for enclosure technology and IT infrastructure. 10,000 employees worldwide work on new innovations, industry solutions and business models. A small steel manufacturing company has become a global digital enterprise. What hasn’t changed: Rittal is a family business – responsibility, solidarity and social commitment have always been a top priority.

Herborn, 1 April 2021 – Rittershausen in Dietzhölztal – no one knew in 1961 that a small township in central Hesse would one day give its name to a global compa-ny. Rudolf Loh bought an old weaving mill and founded Rittal. The idea: standard enclosures in standard production, immediately available from stock, faster and better than the individually manufactured enclosures for control components of machines at that time. Long delivery times and quality defects were now a thing of the past. The boom of the post-war years had changed industrial manufacturing. Machines were interconnected and produced products in large series in the wake of growing consumption. So, Rudolf Loh’s idea came just at the right time.

A lot has happened since then. Yesterday, as today, innovations from the Herborn-based company are shaping industries around the world. Rittal solutions are used in control and switchgear engineering as well as in IT and the energy market, in shipbuilding, hospitals and soccer stadiums. 58 subsidiaries handle sales and service of Rittal products worldwide. In the region, Rittal is the largest employer and has recently invested over 250 million euros in the construction of a completely digitally integrated plant in Haiger.

From the system to the cloud

How did it come about? In the course of industrial automation, Rittal developed the enclosure into an entire enclosure system. The products were intended to solve several of the customers’ problems at once, for example with climate control and power distribution solutions. To this day, the company and corporate culture are characterized by the system idea – and the claim to drive change instead of just reacting to it. The system prevailed, not only in industry, but also in IT, where Rittal made a name for itself as a “newcomer”. To this day, energy efficiency, climate change or fail-safe power distribution are highly relevant topics where Rittal makes its customers successful with innovative solutions for industrial and IT infrastructures of all sizes.

In parallel, Rittal invested in a small company with two employees in the mid-1980s and built up Eplan – at a time when hardly anyone was thinking about software solutions for enclosure technology. Over the next years and decades, a wide range of software and services related to engineering was developed. Today, Rittal’s sister company is one of the world’s leading software providers for electrical engineering. Together, Eplan and Rittal now optimize and industrialize the entire value chain for customers in control and switchgear engineer-ing. Currently, automation solutions such as machines for processing control cabinets are just as much a part of the program as sophisticated control cabinet system technology.

From the digital twin to edge computing

Helping to shape technological change in industry worldwide and taking responsibility for its home in Central Hesse – that was Rittal’s goal when it invested in the construction of the world’s most modern compact and small enclosure manufacturing facility to Industry 4.0 standards in Haiger five years ago. In 2020, the plant went into operation. Hundreds of machines and workstations were networked to digitally handle highly complex processes from ordering to production and logistics. In the course of this, the company created intelligent edge and cloud solutions together with their sister startup German Edge Cloud, tailored to the needs of the industry, housed in their own data center, tested in their own company. Rittal is thus once again on the path to standardization, also in the field of digitalization: German Edge Cloud is a founding member of GAIA-X, the European data infrastructure consortium, and a member of CATENA-X, the automotive network for secure data exchange.

People matter in the family business

Over decades, the company’s employees have shaped change – from the youngest apprentice to the most experienced specialist, from the development of innovations to the integration of refugees. Largest employer in the Central Hesse region and a family business by heart: Every year, the employees of the Friedhelm Loh Group – Rittal and its sister companies Eplan, Cideon, Stahlo, LKH, German Edge Cloud and Loh Services – jointly donate huge sums to social projects, already totaling well over 5 million euros. On the occasion of the company’s 50th anniversary, owner Prof. Friedhelm Loh established the Rittal Foundation, which has been supporting projects and institutions in the fields of social welfare, education and culture ever since.

“I am very proud of 60 years of success that we have written together with all our employees,” says Prof. Friedhelm Loh, owner and CEO of the Friedhelm Loh Group: “What makes us tick is curiosity, customer orientation, the courage to take risks and the joy of shared success. Because we love the future.”

Researchers at Graphene Flagship partner, the Vienna University of Technology in Austria, has reported an image sensor with an integrated artificial neural network (ANN) capable of learning and classifying images within nanoseconds. The chip is a thousand times faster and uses much less power than conventional vision technologies.

The image sensor can simultaneously capture and process images, making object recognition many orders of magnitude faster. The device does not consume any electrical power when it is operating, since the photons themselves provide the energy for the electric current.

The sensor is complemented by an ANN, a man-made system inspired by our brain. In an ANN, components dubbed “neurons” are fed data and cooperate to tackle a problem. In this case, recognising an image.

The researchers in Vienna, supported by the European research project, the Graphene Flagship, devised sensors containing nine pixels – the ‘neurons’ – placed in a 3×3 array. Every pixel in turn, consists of three photodiodes, which are semiconductor devices that convert light into electrical current, that provide three outputs. Each photodiode links its pixel to the other 8 pixels.

The current from each photodiode is determined by the intensity of incoming light and the voltage across it. Each neuron sums the individual currents coming from the other 8 neurons, and the combined values are then fed into a computer.

The device can classify images after a series of training processes, but it can also recognise a characteristic component or structure of an image from input data, without extra information.

The speed sets this device apart from conventional machine vision. Conventional technology is usually capable of processing up to 100 frames per second, with some faster systems capable of working up to 1,000 frames per second. In comparison, this system works with an equivalent of 20 million frames per second.

It has been suggested that the device will be scaled up with today’s technology and find applications in different fields, such as fluid dynamics, high-energy physics, combustion processes or mechanical breakdown.

“Scaling the devices up, this neuromorphic approach can play out its strengths in the realm of image recognition and processing,” explains Lukas Mennel, first author of the study. “We are also considering other ideas, like improving the light absorption or extending the spectral range into the infrared. In principle, the capabilities of this device are not only limited to visual data. Any kind of data could be (pre)processed with an artificial neural network in the sensor itself. For example, audio or olfactory neuromorphic sensors could be developed for rapid on-chip processing.”

“This impressive work shows a completely new application of layered material-based cameras, taking advantage of its unique properties like its in-situ tunability.” explained Frank Koppens, Graphene Flagship work package Lleader for Photonics and Optoelectronics. “Neural network image sensors will impact society in many different ways, and with layered materials the high-speed requirements have now been met.”

Andrea C. Ferrari, Science and Technology Officer of the Graphene Flagship and Chair of its Management Panel, added: “This work is another major milestone for the Graphene Flagship. The Flagship is clearly world-leading when it comes to the integration into chips of layered materials. These advanced building blocks will underpin the development of new state-of-the-art technologies.”

For more information on this Graphene Flagship research, click here.

ADLINK, a leader in edge computing, has joined the Senseye-Ready ecosystem to offer predictive maintenance solutions supported by the Senseye ROI Lock guarantee. Manufacturing, maintenance and operations managers can now implement predictive maintenance with complete confidence that they will get a minimum 100% return on their software investment.

Through the Senseye Ready program, ADLINK edge AI platforms pair with Senseye PdM software, which tracks machine health and alerts users of potential machine failures before they occur, to ensure the predictive maintenance experience will work out-of-the-box. Based on previous deployments, the combined solution requires an initial setup and learning period of just five days and less than an hour for training on the Senseye application.

“Joining the Senseye-Ready Partner ecosystem is part of ADLINK’s commitment to making factories smarter,” said Daniel Collins, Director of IoT Solutions and technology, ADLINK. “Our offerings support data acquisition and analysis from many different types of manufacturing assets, enabling predictive maintenance capabilities across fleets and factories to yield higher productivity and reduce losses due to machine downtime.”

ADLINK’s range of rugged machine condition monitoring (MCM) devices are pre-configured with its Edge IoT software, allowing the aggregation of asset performance data from multiple sensors at the edge on the factory floor. This data is streamed in real-time to Senseye’s cloud-based platform for immediate and historical analysis, to identify unusual operating performance metrics and alert maintenance managers to take action to prevent costly equipment shutdowns.

The Senseye Ready Partner program ensures testing and verification of ADLINK’s edge AI platforms and Senseye’s predictive maintenance cloud-based software. The Senseye ROI Lock initiative, backed by global reinsurer SCOR, provides customers with a full refund if the savings achieved by avoiding unplanned downtime do not exceed the cost of subscribing to Senseye’s predictive maintenance solution, Senseye PdM. The Senseye-Ready Partner ecosystem is proven to show significant reductions in unplanned downtime and reduced maintenance costs of up to 40 percent.

“We developed Senseye Ready to provide additional benefit to our customers by simplifying procurement and assuring them access to the very best hardware solutions to increase maintenance efficiencies and avoid unplanned machine downtime,” said Graham Dunlop, Partner Director, Senseye. “We saw a perfect fit with ADLINK and the focus both companies have on improving manufacturing operations and driving adoption of Industry 4.0 best practice.”

Precision equipment manufacturer Link Instruments has won the title of ultrasonic instruments manufacturer of the year in the Corporate LiveWire Innovation & Excellence Awards for 2021. The judging took into account a variety of factors such as service, innovation, experience, sustainability and other key criteria.

The Awards were established to celebrate the success and achievements of companies and individuals that have taken an innovative approach in demonstrating exceptional business performance.

“Customers are always saying how much they value our instruments, so we are delighted to receive this public recognition of our innovative products,” said Link Instruments’ Dominique Christie.

One of Link Instruments’ flagship instruments is a fire extinguisher fill checker for quickly assessing banks of fire extinguishers. The ULLC IS uses ultrasound to locate the boundary between the liquified and gaseous gas in the cylinder so that the amount of extinguisher fluid present can be calculated.

Rated for use in hazardous areas, the instrument is the only intrinsically safe, ATEX approved model in the world for checking fire extinguisher levels.

According to Manufacturing Confidence, a report by the Midlands Manufacturing Resilience Commission (M2R), digital industrialisation could be worth as much as £455 billion to Britain’s economy over the next decade. Here Mike John, managing director at industrial metrology supplier The Sempre Group, explores how involving metrology in plans to digitalise can help the British manufacturing sector become a world leader in innovation.

According to the M2R report, the UK trails behind other European nations in deploying the technology needed to increase the UK’s productivity. While British workers often put in the longest hours, our productivity lags — a sorry state of affairs. Many businesses are now reflecting on how digital technologies can help to increase production speed, reduce waste and drive efficiency so that they can compete with global counterparts.

Going digital

Traditionally, manufacturers don’t include metrology in their plans to digitise — while machine tools and other production equipment given the Industry 4.0 go ahead, metrology is usually seen as just a policing mechanism. However, metrology could hold some of the answers to our productivity challenges.

Investing in digital technologies for quality management can give manufacturers full control over their measurement data, so they can use it to make better decisions. A fully digitised approach to quality removes the challenge of integrating data from fragmented sources, reduces room for error, improves traceability and enables manufacturers to improve their productivity.

So, what are the steps to digitalising quality management?

A single system

In a traditional paper system, businesses may be performing quality checks, only for the parts to inspected again when they arrive at the next manufacturer’s site. By integrating all quality management into one unified, digital system, companies across the supply chain can share quality data from the same system, eliminating unnecessary extra steps.

Automation

The next step is to use programmable systems like robots to automate manufacturing and measurement processes, making them more efficient, traceable and productive. Instead of having a person loading, measuring and unloading parts on a metrology system all day, manufacturers can simply program a robot to do it for them. Collaborative robots can be placed on production lines to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week to pick the parts from the line, place it in a system for measurement and accept or reject the parts accordingly.

Connect

Wireless connectivity of equipment to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) means manufacturers can easily implement a factory-wide data collection network. The manufacturer can connect suppliers, operations, customers and products with edge analytics and bring the data together into a common SQL database for all business processes.

Manufacturers can use integrated manufacturing and quality management software to generate reports automatically, whether it is first article inspection (FAI) reports, initial sample inspection reports (ISIRs) or production part approval process (PPAP) documents, to comply with standard like ISO 17025, ISO 9000, 21 CFR or AS9100.

Focus on the outcome

While technology plays a large role in automating production, manufacturers should not focus solely on equipment. Digitalisation is about more than just technology, it is about how we use equipment, inspire people and manage data to drive operations and growth.

As manufacturers think about how they can improve operations using technology, it is important to first establish what outcomes they want to achieve. Technology can be a big investment, so manufacturers should make sure that any equipment they purchase adds real value to production. By focussing on the outcome and not the equipment, manufacturers can make decisions that deliver clear return on investment.

To fully embrace digital manufacturing and establish the UK as a global leader in manufacturing innovation, British industry must change its mindset. Instead of just using measurement systems to police quality, manufacturers can use it as a tool to boost productivity and add real value to the business.

Strong price pressure combined with high quality requirements – the beverage and bottle industry faces the classic dilemma of many industries. This is also the case in the quality control department of a French manufacturer of plastic caps. Reliably detecting cracks and micro-cracks on plastic caps in 40 different colours and shades running at high speed on a production line is a real challenge. APREX Solutions from Nancy, France has successfully achieved this goal with the help of image processing technology and artificial intelligence. The basic images are provided by a USB 3 industrial camera from IDS Imaging Development Systems.

SOLOCAP is a subsidiary of La Maison Mélan Moutet, “flavour conditioner since 1880” and manufactures all types of plastic caps for the food sector at its industrial site in Contrexéville. Among them, a top-class screw cap suitable for any glass or PET bottle. Thanks to a clampable lamella ring arranged around the bottle collar, it enables simple, fast, absolutely tight and secure seal. However, the slats must be reliably and extremely carefully checked for cracks, tears and twists during production. This is the only way to guarantee absolute tightness.

The previous inspection system could not meet these high requirements. APREX Solutions realised the new solution with artificial intelligence individually on the basis of in-house software algorithms. The necessary specifications were developed in advance in cooperation with the customer. This also included several inspection stages, one of which, for example, was the reject control to avoid false reports. The introduction took place in two phases:

First, the specific “SOLOCAP application” was trained with the help of the intelligent APREX Track AI solution. The software includes various object detector, classifier and standard methods that operate at different levels. Networked accordingly, they ultimately deliver the desired result tailored to the customer. Four control levels with several test points guarantee a reliability rate of over 99.99%.

In the second step, this application was implemented in the production line right after the first assembly run with APREX Track C&M. The latter was specially developed for the diverse image processing requirements in the industrial sector. This includes, among other things, the control and safeguarding of a production line up to the measurement, identification and classification of defects in the production environment. The software suite delivers the desired results quickly and efficiently, without time-consuming development processes. After a short training of the AI methods, the complete system is ready for use at the customer. In the case of SOLOCAP, it combines an IDS UI-3280CP-C-HQ industrial camera, powerful ring illumination and a programmable logic controller (PLC) to provide comprehensive control over all inspection processes. At the same time, it records all workflows in real time and ensures complete traceability. Only one camera is needed for this. However, APREX TRACK C&M could handle up to 5 cameras.

“The difficulty of this project consisted mainly in the very subtle expression of the defects we were looking for and in the multitude of colours. With our software suite, it was possible to quickly set up an image processing application. Despite the complexity,” explains Romain Baude – founder APREX Solutions. The image from the camera provides the basis for the evaluations. It captures every single cap directly in the production line at high speed and makes the smallest details visible to the software.

One crucial component: the camera

The UI-3280CP-C-HQ industrial camera integrated into the system with the 5 MP IMX264 CMOS sensor from Sony sets new standards in terms of light sensitivity, dynamic range and colour reproduction. The USB 3 industrial camera provides excellent image quality with extraordinarily low-noise performance – at frame rates up to 36 fps. CP stands for “Compact Power”. This is because the tiny powerhouse for industrial applications of all kinds is fast, reliable and enables a high data rate of 420 MByte/s with low CPU load. Users can choose from a large number of modern CMOS sensors from manufacturers such as Sony, CMOSIS, e2v and ON Semiconductor with a wide range of resolutions. Its innovative, patented housing design with dimensions of only 29 x 29 x 29 millimetres makes it suitable for tasks in the fields of automation, automotive, medical technology and life sciences, agriculture, logistics as well as traffic and transport, among others. Screwable cables ensure a reliable electrical connection. Thanks to the IDS-characteristic plug & play principle, the cameras are automatically recognised by the system and are immediately ready for use, as Romain Baude confirms: “The excellent colour reproduction of the UI-3280CP-C-HQ and its high resolution of 5 MP were decisive factors for us in choosing the camera. At the same time, the model enabled a quick, uncomplicated integration into our system.”

Outlook

Anthony Vastel – Head of Technology and Industry at SOLOCAP – sees a lot of potential in the new inspection system: “APREX’s AI-based approach has opened new doors for our 100% vision-based quality control. Our requirements for product safety, but also for reject control, especially in the case of false reports, were quickly met. We are convinced that we can go one step further by continuing to increase the efficiency of the system at SOLOCAP and transferring it to other production lines.” AI offers quality assurance, but also all other industries in which image processing technology is used, new, undreamed-of fields of application. It makes it possible to solve tasks in which classic, rule-based image processing reaches its limits. Thus, high-quality results can be achieved with comparatively little effort – quickly, creatively and efficiently.

APREX Solutions and IDS have recognised this and offer solutions with intelligent products that make it easier for customers to enter this new world. Image processing and AI – a real dream team on course for growth…