ProPhotonix recently launched a short-wave infrared (SWIR) offering to its Hyperspectral linelight solution – the COBRA HyperSpec. Here we discuss the types of applications that are using hyperspectral imaging, in particular SWIR.

Food processing

Machine vision has proven to be a highly efficient and reliable means of assisting food production; assessing food quality, removing contaminants and ensuring food labeling accuracy – to name just a few.

In our latest whitepaper , we discuss a multiwavelength solution we developed for a manufacturer of inline sorting and grading equipment. They needed a flexible, multi-wavelength LED light for a vision system used to sort and grade fruit and vegetables. Different contaminants needed to be identified as well as other properties such as size and colour.

SWIR imaging in particular can prove useful in scenarios where the light is poor or the camera’s sensitivity is particularly challenging. For example, in identifying below-surface bruising in fruit or measuring the moisture content of baked goods to determine freshness.

Plastic and Textile Recycling

The European Commission has set the goal that at least 50% of all plastic packaging waste will be recycled by 2025, and to reach 55% by 2030. The EU’s executive arm also wants to ensure that all plastic packaging on the EU market will be either reusable or recyclable by 2030. This has inspired a number of global brands to look to innovative recycling solutions. Procter and Gamble¹ are looking to imaging technologies to assist in sorting packing waste leading to more efficient recycling. UV fluorescence highlights watermarks that determine the sorting criteria. These watermarks provide a lot of information about the packaging origin, and can help separate materials that are difficult to determine e.g if covered in dirt, or are mixed with others. This helps to easily identify plastic sources enabling efficient processing.

Agricultural Advances

‘Precision agriculture’ has been greatly assisted by hyperspectral imaging where drones or satellites can indicate disease, pests, soil characteristics, fertilizer or water requirements and offer more accurate yield estimation all based on contrasts and shading highlighting in images taken of the crops.  This can help a great deal with challenges such as water management and help prevent under- and over- watering.

ProPhotonix provides SWIR technology solutions allowing users the ability to tackle difficult industry challenges such as textile recycling and food quality. The COBRA HyperSpec now offers SWIR wavelengths (950nm -1750nm).

Explore further into our offerings encompassing multispectral imaging solutions and hyperspectral imaging solutions. Contact us and receive free professional advice now.

¹ “Sorting the Plastic Recycling Problem”, Tim Sykes, https://packagingeurope.com/sorting-plastic-recycling-tracers-digital-watermarks-tomra-procter-gamble/

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Key Features

This 3m COBRA RGB provides extremely bright, uniform, multispectral illumination ideally suited in line scan applications such as print inspection and calibration. Built on the established COBRA Slim LED line light platform, it is available with up to three wavelengths. Wavelengths can also be configured to customer specifications. The COBRA RGB offers a compact form factor and is built in increments of 100mm modules.

It also offers:

• Wavelengths: from UV to Visible and IR
• Field Adjustable: Focusing Distance and Diffusers
• Chip-On-Board: Extreme Brightness and High Uniformity
• Modular: Available in any Length

The COBRA RGB includes integrated intensity controls for each wavelength via Ethernet communication, providing the user with greater flexibility to tune the light color output tailored to specific production runs and applications.

Strobing

The RGB LED Line Light features a fast strobing function providing up to five times the light intensity, when compared to continuous operation, ensuring production line speed is maximized and not compromised. Importantly, the strobe function also allows users to rapidly switch between all three colors in less than a millisecond for applications where multiple inspections need to be carried out on the same target in a rapidly moving production line.

Example Applications

Multispectral and hyperspectral imaging allows users to detect very small differences that traditional RGB or monochrome cameras alone cannot. Example applications include printer manufacturers who can continually monitor the color fidelity of the printed data so that, should any color imperfections occur, the printing process can be dynamically adjusted. Improving inline food inspection techniques can be used to sort damaged and diseased foods and remove unwanted materials such as glass from food production lines. Multispectral lights can be utilized to help detect piracy on banknotes with non-invisible markers.

ProPhotonix Engineering Experience

ProPhotonix has over 20 years of LED experience, its engineering team works closely with the end customer to understand the application requirements such as intensity, strobing, and color tuning. To learn more, visit the COBRA RGB page.

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In machine vision systems, the purpose of the system is to identify certain features of an object. The key to optimizing image quality is to maximize contrast between these features of interest and the background material.

Selecting the optimum wavelength

When seeking to optimize your machine vision lighting, it is recommended that an optimum wavelength study be undertaken. As machine vision cameras have wide and varied spectral responses, it is important to consider all parts of the spectrum, not only visible light, but also non-visible infrared, (IR) or ultraviolet, (UV) light. IR machine vision lighting can be used, for example, to diminish color effects in a monochrome image. This can simplify image analysis resulting in faster processing times. UV machine vision lighting is ideal in certain applications such as food sorting and currency inspection.

Uniformity

It stands to reason that to obtain a clear image, you need a uniform light source. If the light is not uniform, the system will have difficulty in distinguishing between the features of interest and non-uniformities caused by the lighting. ProPhotonix utilizes an LED packaging technique known as Chip on Board technology, which results in extremely uniform LED arrays due to the high packing density of the LEDs.

Angle of illumination

To obtain a high-quality image, it’s critical that the correct angle of illumination is selected for each application. The shape, surface structure and material type of the target object will all influence the way light is reflected.

When seeking to maximize quality in machine vision lighting, designers should pay particular attention to wavelength selection, uniformity and the angle of illumination.To learn more

Download our whitepaper

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Why is form factor important?

This may seem obvious but without the optimum form factor your vision system will not perform as well as it could. It’s worth remembering that the form factor of your machine vision lighting has an impact not only on the size of the overall system, which can be a limiting factor in the success of the project, but also on the performance of the system. Why? The angle of your illumination is critical to optimizing your machine vision system and in systems where the illumination is not considered early enough in the design process, compromises may have to be made. These compromises, either in terms of your lighting choice or your lighting angle have the potential to significantly impact on the performance of your system.

Selecting the optimum machine vision lighting

ProPhotonix offer some of the most compact illuminators on the market. Due to our expertise in Chip-on-Board Technology and optical design, our products also offer market leading intensity and uniformity, ensuring the optimum image quality is delivered to your system. We also offer some of the most flexible products on the market. Our COBRA Flex series, for example, is designed to offer the performance of the COBRA Slim Series in a flexible form factor. The compact light head can be installed in tight spaces with the electronics housed separately. A number of mounting options are also available.

Specific Application requirements

If you have an machine vision lighting application with tight space constraints, contact one of our applications engineers at sales@prophotonix.com for advice on how to optimize your vision system with Machine Vision Lighting.

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Why focus on Machine Vision Lighting?

Much has been said about the importance of machine vision lighting but what does this mean in real terms? Selecting the best illuminator, the optimum wavelength and utilizing the correct machine vision lighting technique will:

• Improve image quality
• Increase throughput
• Deliver consistent performance over time

Selecting your Machine Vision Lighting

As with any project, your search for the optimum Machine Vision Lighting starts with research. Product Datasheets can be extremely useful in helping you to narrow down your choice of illuminator. At ProPhotonix, we offer extensive datasheets with accurate specifications for each of our machine vision lighting products. These are available to download from our document library.

We also offer evaluation products free of charge, enabling you to test our products in your specific application. If you need further technical support, we have a team of experienced Application Engineers who can work with you to identify the best solution for your specific application needs.

If customization is required or a complete turnkey custom solution is necessary, we will design and manufacture a lighting solution tailored to your application needs. To find out more about some of our custom solutions, download our case studies.

Download our brochure

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What is IP67?

The IP rating (or ingress protection rating) of a product refers to the product’s protection against solid objects including dust and fluids, such as water and chemicals. In the rating, the first digit refers to the protection from dust, while the second digit refers to the protection from fluids. A higher number reflects a greater protection level.

Why IP67 machine vision lighting?

In some applications and industries, such as the food and beverage industry, all machinery is subjected to regular wash-down. This process can use harsh chemicals, therefore, machine vision lighting must be protected.

The IP67 SpecBright range

The new range offers an IP67 machine vision lighting solution in a variety of form factors. Area, ring and spot lights are available in a number of sizes. The SpecBright range has been developed using Chip-on-Board LED technology to deliver the extreme brightness and excellent uniformity from a compact form factor to ensure the optimum machine vision lighting setup. For more information, read our post on the Advantages of Chip on Board for machine vision lighting..

IP67 SpecBrights are available in UV, visible and IR wavelengths, as well as white. Designed for easy integration, they can be operated in either continuous or strobe mode. For more information, visit our SpecBright Machine Vision Lighting.

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Print Inspection Phase

Image quality is critical in any type of print inspection. If the quality of the captured image is poor, print errors may not be detected during inspection. In order to ensure maximum image quality, a uniform source of illumination over the entire object is required. With processing speeds of up to 40 notes per second, the intensity of the machine vision lighting is also critical. Without sufficient intensity the system will not capture an adequate image and line speed will have to be reduced to allow for image quality; reducing the throughput of the production process.

When banknotes are inspected for visual defects, including missing print, ink spots etc., a monochrome line scan camera can be used along with a monochrome LED Line Light. If, however, color information (color uniformity and consistency in color) is required, a color camera and white light source will be used.

UV Machine Vision Lighting

Anti-counterfeiting features, which are typically invisible to the naked eye, must also be examined for consistency. To inhibit counterfeiting of banknotes, selected features are printed in fluorescent ink, which is invisible to the naked eye. During the inspection process, defects in the application of fluorescent ink markings can be detected by a monochrome line scan camera with appropriate filters, which observes the banknote illuminated under UV light. UV COBRA Slim has been utilized in a number of these types of applications.

Key Considerations for an LED Line Light for Currency Inspection

As discussed, there are a number of considerations when selecting machine vision lighting for currency inspection. Considerations include: uniformity, intensity, available wavelengths and reliability.

The COBRA Slim series, with its marketing leading intensity and uniformity, provides an ideal solution in a number of currency inspection applications.

For more information visit the Cobra Slim series page.

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What is a Line Scan Application?

A line scan application is defined as a machine vision application that utilizes a one-dimensional (1D) line scan camera. Fundamentally, a line scan camera differs from an area scan camera in that it has a linear array of sensors as opposed to a two-dimensional (2D) matrix. A 2D image is obtained by the sys­tem’s 1D camera which is built up line by line as the target is in motion. In some applications, e.g. rail inspection, it is the motion of the camera that creates the 2D image but this type of system is much less prevalent in the manufacturing industry.

Web Manufacturing

The most common type of line scan application is in web manufacturing of materials like paper, foil, film and high resolution imaging of larger discrete parts. These webs operate at very high speeds and often operate 24/7. Reliable, low maintenance LED Line lights play a vital part in maintaining the quality of output and avoiding downtime.

High Resolution Applications

For a given cost, line scan cameras have the potential to provide much higher resolution images than their area scan counterparts. For this reason, line scan is often the vision system of choice when high resolution defects need to be identified in products that are moving. An example of this type of application is in the solar industry, when silicon wafers are inspected for micro cracks and occlusions. The high resolution is achieved by the density of pixels across the 1D sensor (cross-web resolution) and the line rate at which the camera runs (down-web resolution). As line rates tend to be high frequency the result is short exposure times, which means line scan systems require more light than typical area scan systems.

Cylindrical Objects

Line scan technology can also be used in the imaging of cylindrical objects. Here, the target is rotating as the camera acquires the image lines. The resulting 2D image is inspected by the vision system. This type of system is commonly used in the food & beverage and pharmaceutical industries for critical ap­plications such as final label inspection.

Space Constraints

Line scan vision systems are also used in restricted spaces. In certain applications, particularly where vision systems are being retro-fitted onto existing web production lines, space constraints make the form factor of the illuminators critical.

For more information on LED Line Lights in line scan applications, download the whitepaper.

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