Evaluating the sealing quality of a sealing strip sealed to a packaging web in a packaging machine

An automatic heat-sealing quality control system to automatically control a quality of a heat-sealing of a sealing strip to a longitudinal edge of a packaging web at a heat-sealing station in a packaging machine, where sealed packages containing pourable food products are continuously produced from a continuous vertical tube filled with the pourable food product and formed by longitudinally folding the packaging web to overlap longitudinal edges thereof and then heat-sealing the overlapping longitudinal edges;

• the system comprises:
• a sensory system arranged at the heat-sealing station to output an output that allows the quality of the heat-sealing of the sealing strip to the longitudinal edge of the packaging web to be evaluated;
• and
• electronic computing resources designed to communicate with the sensory system to receive and process the output thereof to automatically evaluate the quality of the heat-sealing of the sealing strip to the longitudinal edge of the packaging web;
• the sensory system comprises an artificial vision system to capture digital images of the packaging web and of the sealing strip;
• the artificial vision system comprises:
• a thermal imaging camera designed to operate in the electromagnetic spectrum invisible to human eye to capture and output thermal digital images;