The benefits of quality assurance doesn’t stop at establishing a good relationship with your customers. Doing everything you can to make sure your product is flawless can also save you thousands of dollars in damages. If a product fails and you have no way to prove the cause of the failure happened after the product was out of your hands, then you’re setting yourself up to pay hefty, undue legal fees.
One way our customers have addressed this risk is with our build line QA camera system. The system is custom programmed by Tuff engineers to take a photo, record the necessary information to identify the product, and store the photo with that information. That way, in the event something happens to a product down the line and your customer starts investigating the point of error, you have the proof to keep your reputation clear.
The system operates with a number of cameras attached by USB to a PC. The PC searches for a signal from the build line PLC, which then commands the cameras to take a photo and provides the product information (such as a serial number). Together, that information is sent back to the PC and stored for later reference.
Our current software is programmed to work with iCube cameras. It can support up to 4 cameras simultaneously on a single computer, enabling you to get pictures from multiple angles. The file names of the photos can include string data from the PLC and the date, time, and camera name as necessary. The software is compatible with ControlLogix/CompactLogix processors and uses an Ingear.Net software library, so no OPC is required.
The style of lens and the lighting necessary to take good photos will depend on the environment and application. We can work with you to figure out the best configuration of the system for it to work optimally in your environment. Tuff has worked on a variety of build line systems—with our experience you can rest assured that the integration of your camera system will go seamlessly.