In recent years, the glass containers industry has made significant steps forward towards production quality improvement. But still, the challenge is to anticipate dimensional control at an earlier stage of the glassmaking process, with the purpose to immediately take the necessary actions and reduce scrap parts.
The control of glass containers is currently carried out, on sample basis, near the production line, with go-no-go gauges. Alternatively, dimensional measurements are performed with manual gauges or semi-automatic/automatic gauging systems in the QC Lab. Anyway, bring containers to the QC Lab and wait for measurement results delays the availability of crucial information necessary to set- up the process.
Control with go-no go gauges presents a whole set of issues: it does not provide any quantitative information and it relies on the operator’s skills. Moreover, it implies high costs since a set of dedicated go-no-go gauges is required for each article produced and these hard gauges have to be managed and periodically re-calibrated. Furthermore, from this method, it is not possible to collect any data, and perform statistical analysis to improve the process.
Marposs innovation: a new tool to bring QC Lab technology to the production line
Knowing the needs of the glass containers industry, Marposs leveraged its long experience in gauging equipment for use in industrial environment and highly demanding markets - such as the automotive and aerospace ones - to develop innovative equipment which can replace all go-no-go gauges for external dimensions measurement.
Based on optical technology, Marposs’ VisiQuick-Mini allows to perform quick and accurate measurements of all external dimensions and parameters of glass containers, regardless of their size, shape and colour. Measurements results are related to the mould.
The VisiQuick-Mini is a flexible, compact and cost-effective solution. Thanks to its compact dimensions, it can be used either for a fixed installation or mounted on a cart to be moved from one line to the other.
Whatsmore, the VisiQuick-Mini records the results of the measurements performed. Its automatic measuring cycle carries out an accurate and precise measurements, providing data, which are not available with go-no-go gauges. The collected data can be analyzed and used to fine-tune the process.
Automatic measuring cycle
Thanks to its automatic measuring cycle VisiQuick-Mini allows to quickly and accurately perform, directly on the production line, a wide range of measurements which normally can be performed only in the laboratory.
Once the glass container to be measured is manually loaded in the gauging bench, the operator just needs to press START to activate the measuring cycle. When the measuring cycle is finished, a message is displayed to inform the operator.
Integrated solution
The potential of the VisiQuick-Mini is not limited to its flexibility, accuracy, compactness and the possibility to reduce production costs. Another important feature of Marposs’ VisiQuick-Mini is that it allows to record the results of the measurements performed, which means guarantee an increasingly higher quality of the production process.
The VisiQuick-Mini perfectly keeps up with Industry 4.0: it is compatible with different Manufacturing Execution System (MES) softwares, providing crucial information to decision-makers for the control and optimization of the production process.
MES softwares are used to acquire all information related to the production cycle and to monitor the production process in real-time.
VisiQuick-Mini supports a bidirectional communication with MES softwares.
First of all the VisiQuick-Mini receives from MES software the necessary information to automatically generate the recipe of the article to be measured.
Then it sends measurement results, as soon as the measurement of any single container of the batch is completed, so that it is possible with MES software to perform statistical analysis on the data collected.
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