Posted to News on 6th Sep 2007, 20:25
Machine vision timing controller suits conveyor applications
Firstsight Vision is introducing a new machine vision timing controller that enables accurate timing control for a variety of events in production line machine vision systems. These include component sensing, camera triggering and reject gate control. Accurate timing control is essential to the efficient operation of a machine vision system with a conveyor belt to ensure that measurements are made at the right time and that reject product is removed from the process.
The new unit, the CC320 from Gardasoft Vision, utilises Ethernet connectivity, thereby complementing the use of GigE vision cameras and enabling a network-centric approach to adopted for machine vision control architectures. The new unit features eight inputs and eight outputs and can provide microsecond-accurate event timings.
This versatile unit can trigger single or multiple cameras at different times and the trigger signal width can be used to control the camera exposure timings. In addition, the delay between the event trigger and reject gate activation can be controlled, with encoder signals ensuring that the reject gate stays open while the product is at the reject position. The timing for gate activation can be resynchronised to the original 'component present' sensor to allow for variations in reject gate timings.
For systems where the conveyor belt speeds and timings may vary, one-, two-, or three-wire encoders can be used with the CC320 to determine the exact movement, so the belt can be stopped or even moved backwards while preserving the reject timing.
The CC320 acts as a miniature web server and can be controlled by image processing software on a remote PC. It can be accessed in three ways: via the built-in web server, via simple string commands from any application program using TCP/IP or UDP, or via the front panel controls.
