technology trends
Andrew Wilson, Editor, andyw@pennwell.com
continued on page 5 continued on page 5
• FORESTRY AUTOMATION
Vision system speeds log
volume analysis
To remain competitive, lumber mill operators must accurately determine the amount of
wood that is produced from their timber suppliers. In the lumber industry, this is determined by measuring the length and diameter of logs and then calculating how many
one inch thick boards can be fabricated from
them – a figure known as board feet measure.
After trees are felled, they are de-limbed
and cut to a specific length after which the
diameter of each one must be measured. “In
the past,” says Greg Hilbert, President of eSo-
lutions (Lafayette, IN, USA; www.teamesolu-
tions.com), “measuring the diameter of each
log was performed manually – a process that
was labor intensive, time consuming and not
consistently accurate.
Based on the success eSolutions had
shown in the development of a vision-based wood trimming system, Pike Lumber
(Akron, IN, USA; www.pikelum-ber.com) tasked Hilbert and his colleagues with the development of a
vision-based system to automatically
perform log diameter measurement.
AUTOMOTIVE ANALYSIS
Conoscopic holography
makes engine
measurements more
accurate
To ensure the high performance
required by today’s automotive engines,
automotive manufacturers must ensure
that engines are manufactured with
close tolerances. This entails inspecting
the engine block to make certain that
machined features such as bore holes
meet the correct specifications.
“In the past,” says Dr. Xavier Savin,
President of Groupe Visionic (
Saint-Aubin-lès-Elbeuf, France; www.visionic.
fr), “such tasks were accomplished using
coordinate measurement machines that
used mechanical probes to make such
measurements.” Although effective, such
systems are less accurate that those that
employ non-contact optical measurement techniques.
One such highly accurate optical
method for performing such non-contact
measurement is that of conoscopic holography, a technique that has been used by
Groupe Visionic in the development of
an automated machine to measure features of engine blocks such as the depth
and width of bore holes.
After engine blocks are manufactured,
they are robotically placed on a stage
under two ConoPoint- 3 laser distance
sensors from Optimet (North Andover,
MA, USA; www.optimet.com) that are
mounted on an X-Y-Z gantry. To measure
the geometric charac-
• INDUS TRIAL INSPECTION
Smart cameras check
bottles at high-speed
In today’s manufacturing environments,
products are being produced at increasing
rates. This is especially true in the beverage
industry where bottles are filled, capped and
inspected. Cap inspection, tamper band and
printed date code must be performed quickly
to keep up with demand. The systems that
perform these tasks must be designed so that
wash-down and sterilization can be com-
pleted rapidly.
This was the task faced by EPIC Systems
(St. Louis, MO, USA; www.epicmachinev-ision.com) when a major producer of soft
drinks approached the company to develop
a system to inspect 6oz plastic bottles of fruit
juice at speeds of up to
continued on page 8
Mounted to the front of a Tigercat
240B loader, a vision system from
eSolutions allows the operator to
automatically determine the width
of timber logs without leaving the
cabin.
continued on page 9
continued on page 6
