Container Filling with Optical Inspection for Defective Part Sorting
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for filling injection molded parts into containers fail to ensure the required quality, leading to an accumulation of defective parts and reduced productivity due to precautionary measures, as it is difficult to identify and separate containers with an excessively high error rate without separate inspection.
Innovation Solution
Implementing an optical inspection system that uses unique identification features on containers to assign characteristics of injection molded parts, allowing for partial testing and targeted elimination of containers with excessive error rates, thereby ensuring quality without complete alignment or separate inspection.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If separate inspection of filled containers is performed to identify defective parts, then quality of filled containers is improved, but productivity and machine utilization are reduced due to additional inspection time and complexity
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by inspecting injection-molded parts during their transport to the filling unit, before they are actually filled into containers. This allows defective parts to be identified and removed in advance, so that only quality parts are filled into containers. The inspection occurs during the natural transport process without requiring separate inspection steps after filling, thus maintaining high machine utilization while ensuring container quality.
2Reliability
If all injection-molded parts are inspected during transport to the filling unit, then quality assurance is improved, but device complexity and inspection time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies partial action by inspecting only a statistically relevant number of injection-molded parts during transport, rather than inspecting every single part. The system determines characteristics of all cyclically produced parts based on inspection results of this selected portion, using statistical methods to ensure quality assurance. This approach provides sufficient quality control while avoiding the excessive complexity and time consumption of inspecting every part.
3Productivity
If defective parts are not identified early, then filling process continues uninterrupted, but containers accumulate defective parts exceeding acceptable error rates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies feedback by using the inspection system to detect defective parts during transport and providing this information to the filling unit's control system. The control system receives feedback about which parts are defective and adjusts the filling process accordingly, ensuring that defective parts are not filled into containers. This feedback loop maintains both filling process continuity and container quality by enabling real-time quality control without interrupting the overall production flow.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This approach reduces the error rate in filled containers by identifying and sorting out defective parts early, maintaining high machine utilization while ensuring quality, and allowing for uninterrupted filling processes.
Implementation Method 1
Implementing an optical inspection system that uses unique identification features on containers to assign characteristics of injection molded parts
Data Source
Figure 1
AI summary
A method for successively filling multiple containers with plastic parts produced cyclically using a plastics processing machine, and an arrangement for carrying out the method. Containers with an excessively high defect rate can be selectively rejected using automatically read identification characteristics of each container and a mapping of the characteristics recorded during testing to the uniquely identified containers.