US 4,691,231 AGranted

Bottle inspection system

AssigneeVistech Corporation

InventorsTyce Fitzmorris, Eric Espenhahn, Jamie Pereira

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Abstract

A method and apparatus for inspecting the sidewalls of containers on a continuously-moving conveyor includes recording instantaneous upper and lower angularly-spaced images of the bottles as they pass. Data on the images is stored as numeric data indicating the grey shade of each pixel in a matrix of pixels, which matrix is examined for edges and then divided based on detected edges into inspection windows. The windows are subject to separate criteria between typically scuffed areas and open areas. The occurrence of pixels in at least three grey ranges reflecting clear glass, opaque glass, and scuffed glass, together with the correlation of such occurrences between angularly-spaced views and upper and lower views, is processed to detect defects. A memory stores a status indication in a queue representing the acceptability of the bottles being examined, which are then segregated by a downstream reject kicker mechanism.

Claims20

Dependent claims

An inspection system for hollow transparent and translucent bodies, comprising:

means for delivering the bodies to an inspection zone;
diffuse illumination means disposed on at least one side of the inspection zone;
a plurality of video cameras, each of the cameras being on an opposite side of the inspection zone from the diffuse illumination means, and oriented toward and focused on the inspection zone, the cameras being operable to provide a signal representing shades of light and dark of a matrix of pixels in a video field for each of the cameras, the cameras viewing the illumination means through two walls of the bodies, the fields for successive cameras representing sidewall elevation views angularly spaced around the bodies;
and,
at least one digital processor having means for storing a digital representation of said shades of light and dark, the processor being adapted to count occurrences in at least three predetermined ranges of said shades in predetermined areas on the bodies and to determine the number of occurrences of shades in each of said ranges, and the processor being operable to select bodies meeting acceptable criteria based upon said number of occurrences and based upon a correlation of numbers of occurrences for the predetermined areas.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.