Quality Scanner
Optical quality control for the pre-processing of tempered glass

The current manufacturing of tempered glass is a complex as well as time- and cost-intensive process. Not only long processing times, but also high energy costs have a significant impact. Additionally, there are often capacity bottlenecks at the tempered glass – as well as at the heat soak furnace. Contamination, and glass defects will mean that a high-quality finished product cannot be delivered, and must be avoided at all costs at the beginning of the value creation chain. Some companies try to minimize this problem by using manual inspection at the entrance to the tempered glass furnace. However, this method is unreliable, since the staff doing the inspection also have to load or unload glass and may not have the right lighting. Furthermore, horizontal glass surfaces are always difficult to examine and when inspections are carried out manually, there is the common problem of limited reliability due to fatigue or low motivation of the staff performing the inspection. An examination location such as this also has the isadvantage that a glass that has been removed due to defects cannot be replaced immediately, leading to the furnace not being used to full capacity – and, in the worst case scenario, to customers not receiving deliveries on time.

Today, new, digital image processing is able to automate this kind of quality control with excellent results and to replace manual inspection. These systems installed directly after the washing machine within the glass manufacturing line, leads to effective optimization of production processes and a resulting increase in productivity at the tempered glass furnace. The number of rejects at the end of the pre-processing is reduced, since inadequately cleaned glass can be washed manually before the contamination and the glass are bound together irretrievably in the furnace. Quality control by means of digital image processing will also naturally lead to reduced levels of internal and external complaints, a lowering of production costs and avoidance of delivery bottlenecks.

With the Quality Scanner is today a low cost quality control system available equipped with this innovative technology. Together with the newest generation of intelligent CCD-cameras and an intuitive Windows based user interface, the Quality Scanner takes charge of a reliable In-Line quality control. Directly integrated into the production process of glass preprocessing, this high performance system allows to guarantee your customer a consistent and reproducible quality of the glass independent of human motivation and abilities.

All visual defects like e.g. bubbles, scratches, stones, coating defects, tin, dirt, finger prints, foil defects, ..., as small as 0,5 mm² will be easily detected by the Quality Scanner. The user friendly Windows interface allows you to define and illustrate the exact quality settings according to the specific requirements of your customer.

The either vertical or horizontal version of the Quality Scanner which is completely integrated in the production line after the washing machine, stops only rejectable glass or generate a warning signal. On the screen the rejected glass will be visualized in details by displaying the precise calculated defect positions within the defined quality zones. With such a detailed visualisation your employee will immediately be able to locate the defects on the glass. By integrating the Quality Scanner in your production line you not only gain a high performance tool for improved quality and productivity but also customer satisfaction and confidence.