Enlightened: Datacube Uses Fiber-Optic Line Arrays for Continuous Surface Inspection
Published in Advanced Imaging, September 2000By George Fryburg
As a premier worldwide supplier of sophisticated image processing hardware and software, Datacube follows stringent procedures when choosing a business partner. Thus, when the company began looking for a vendor that could add a high-end inspection solution to an existing product, they searched for a leading company that could provide a high-quality, proven lighting solution. The resulting inspection solution would need to be capable of achieving 100% automatic continuous surface inspection of rolled goods.
Founded in 1979, Datacube quickly became an industry leader in high performance imaging products, including hardware, software, tools, and systems to meet demanding application needs. Headquartered in Danvers, Massachusetts, Datacube has sales offices and distributors worldwide serving a wide variety of markets, including medical imaging, machine vision, and web inspection. Datacube has played a major role in the evolution of high performance imaging. Their mission is to provide customers with innovative image processing solutions that represent the ultimate in price/performance, quality, and service.
Datacube can boast of an impressive client base, including Sony Electronics, which used products from Datacube to develop a high performance image processing system that ensures high quality printing on compact discs. 100% detection of defects in continuous materials at high production speeds is among the most challenging of automated inspection tasks, and is of utmost importance to many of Datacube's clients. For this reason, Datacube needed a sophisticated lighting solution to help satisfy the growing needs of their worldwide clients.
Datacube chose StockerYale, Inc. of Salem, New Hampshire, as one of its vendor. Founded in 1946, StockerYale is recognized as a world leader in providing specialized illumination and optical component products. The company's illumination systems for the machine vision industry are sold to companies like Datacube for use in the commercial, institutional, and industrial markets. Larry Taitelbaum, marketing manager for Datacube, explained the importance of choosing the right vendor.
"The increasingly demanding quality requirements necessitated by ISO 9000 force us to work with only the most respected names in the industry. StockerYale's custom designed fiber optic line arrays allowed us to enhance the "Black Widow" on-line inspection system's capbilities, which minimizes costly scrap, improves quality, thereby increases yield," said Taitelbaum.
The Black Widow, originally introduced in 1996, is a rugged, fully configured inspection system that detects, measures and classifies defects in rolled products. To enhance the system, Datacube knew they needed an advanced lighting solution for their inspection application, and that StockerYale was the company of choice.
According to Wayne Lerman, web inspection products group manager for Datacube, "We chose StockerYale for the Black Widow's fiber optic lighting illumination subsystem because their products were best suited to detect smaller flaws, like holes and pits, which require a uniform, structured light source. StockerYale also offered the choice between an open or closed sealed focusing lens, which in our opinion, put them significantly above their competition," added Lerman. "And the fact that they could customize the fiber optic line arrays to 112," (2,845 mm), showed them to be a reliable and flexible partner."
StockerYale's fiber optic line arrays produce uniform lines of cool illumination, and are ideal for web inspection, microscopy and a variety of machine vision lighting applications that require an extremely focused beam of light. StockerYale's fiber optic line array offerings come in two styles: the low profile and the industrial grade machine vision. Each comes with a choice of PVC covered monocoil sheathing or PVC covered metal hose sheathing to allow flexibility with positioning. The industrial grade machine vision fiber optic line array has a completely sealed, NEMA 12 rated, aluminum housing and lens hood. It also has a versatile, industry standard "T"-slot running the length of its housing for easy mounting. Both the low profile and the industrial grade machine vision fiber optic line arrays are adaptable to many custom configurations. According to Lerman, "It is this ability to customize and perfect a product that brought StockerYale and Datacube together. The outstanding features and benefits of StockerYale's line arrays, combined with their ability to customize, made them a natural partner."
The Black Widow is used for highly proprietary applications and is currently being used to provide 100% automatic inspection of rolled goods in aluminum mills, paper mills, and high-end plastic film converters.
"The uniform, structured lighting produced by StockerYale's fiber optic line arrays, along with the Black Widow's detection sensitivity, high performance and accuracy, allows us to meet the demands of a market that requires the detection of increasingly smaller and more subtle defects," said Lerman. "It is these capabilities of the Black Widow that adds value to any product that it inspects. In addition, because StockerYale's fiber optic line arrays were provided in a fully enclosed housing with a sealed lens hood, we did not have to design a customized enclosure. The purpose of the sealed lens hood is to protect the focusing lens and fiber optic aperture. These critical design specifications were only available from StockerYale.
George Fryburg is the Executive Vice President & Chief
Operating Officer at StockerYale in Salem, NH