Over the years, customers of glass container manufacturers have discovered the bottle as a powerful marketing instrument. More and more, traditional labelling is replaced by engravings of logos, brand and product names in the bottle. Even more differentiation is created by the use of other colors of glass, sometimes even black. With bottle design becoming more complicated, the necessity to apply XPAR Vision’s IR-D in the forming process has grown even more.
The marketing trend results in new challenges for the glass container manufacturers, both in regard to the forming process as in the area of quality inspection. Take for example the production of black glass bottles. Brands like Brockmans’ Gin, Bulldog’s Gin and Hendrick’s Gin and Porto wines from Ferreira for example choose the bottle design as a marketing strength. Even beers and other beverages are bottled more and more in black glass bottles.
IR-D sees through
The biggest challenge with black glass bottles is to compensate for the failing cold end inspection, as the visible light is not passing through the black glass. The solution for the bottle maker to maintain proper quality control is found in the hot end. The unique ‘see-through’ capability of InfraRed technology, embedded in our dual camera system IR-D provides optimal inspection performance for black glass, as good as for any other glass color. Critical defects like for instance stones or inclusions, birdswings, fins, shape defects are detected and rejected in the hot end (see examples for Bulldog (Fig.1a-c) and Ferreira (Fig 2a-d).
Especially the defects in black glass related to glass distribution (thin ware) and internal defects, like stones and birdswings are impossible to detect in cold end.
Realtime feedback
The XPAR Vision IR-D system provides quality control to these difficult types of production. Additionally, it gives real time feedback to operators on any change in glass distribution related to individual cavities. For operators it is easy to take the right remedial/corrective action wherever needed, so wall thickness related defects can be prevented by effective control over the forming process.
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For any further information, please visit www.xparvision.com or contact via contact@xparvision.com or call 0031 50 316 2888.