Machine Vision Applications

In addition to Procemex web inspection and web monitoring solutions, Procemex machine vision applications identify defects in pulp bales, paper rolls, and also paper stacks at converting stage.

These machine vision applications offer not only better production flow, but also, they ensure adequate product quality, improved manufacturing efficiency and increased operator safety in your mill.

With the combination of Procemex intelligent camera solutions, we can be your single source supplier and to provide machine vision applications to cover all your pulp & paper manufacturing stages.

Beyond Web Inspection and Monitoring systems – Procemex intelligent cameras that increase paper-making efficiency

Paper machines and pulp dryers typically have a healthy number of cameras monitoring the product as it goes through the various parts of the machine to analyze sheet breaks or other product or process variation made visible by the monitoring cameras. Paper machines especially - but also to a greater degree the pulp dryers - have defect detection systems installed to detect product defects and to trace the defect origins together with the monitoring system videos. These machine vision systems help resolve issues at the machine itself but outside pulp dryers or paper machines there are virtually no cameras monitoring the various parts of converting process.

Some of the product defects appear only at the converting stage where, for example, the roll wrapping tears at the wrapping line or a pulp bale is missing one of the wrapping wires due to wiring machine running out of steel wire. One of the biggest reasons why these machine vision systems have not existed earlier is that these analysis locations are quite far away from any manned locations requiring long cable pulls and a dedicated computer for each application.

Economical Machine Vision Solutions

Procemex intelligent cameras make these machine vision applications economically viable as all the computing power is in the camera itself potentially eliminating the need for a separate PC. Most of the applications are approval type applications where the camera triggers an output when something is wrong with the analyzed item for example on the roll wrapping line roll inner header is not in place when wrapping is supposed to start. These output signals can then be used to alert operator, who is somewhere else to come and fix the process disturbance, and once completed, the operator can then leave the system on automatic and continue with his interrupted task.

Wood chips can be analyzed online on the conveyor and size distribution statistics are created that can be used together with other pulp quality data to assess for example digesting uniformity.

Pulp slurry coming from pulping process can be analyzed online for its dirt content and refined until dirt content is within specification. When this is done before pulp dryer or paper machine, any additional dirt not seen at this measurement location will have come from the pulp dryer or paper machine itself. A sample flow is taken from the main pulp flow to an analysis window and analyzed in real time. Dirt particles can also be classified according to color, when a color camera is used instead of gray-scale camera. Procemex intelligent camera sends the classified dirt count per time period to the refining control system for actions via TCP/IP message.

Our machine vision tools are based on VisionAppster Software platform

VisionAppster is a unique vision software platform that enables machine vision users to develop and deploy vision systems in a fraction of the time it takes with conventional methods.

This development environment includes graphical tools to create machine vision applications and all necessary end user UI’s, I/O interfaces and data interfaces for vision systems. Applications can be easily adjusted to suit customer specific environment.

Procemex Smart Camera includes an image sensor, a processing unit, I/O and connections for network and external I/O. VisionAppster enables vision applications to be deployed in any smart camera with Linux or Windows operating system. VisionAppster applications can be deployed in Procemex Smart Cameras with Linux or Windows operating system.