IRIS was contacted by a potential client with an existing vision system that failed to produce desired results. IRIS had been selected by our reputation in the field of Machine Vision with Robot control. The ailed system consisted of a FANUC robot with a machine vision camera.

The goal of the system was to:

• Align clusters of hotdog and hamburger buns within two lanes of a slicing machine. This includes across machine direction and rotational placement.
• Balance the number of clusters in each lane so that neither lane is starved of product.
• Perform defect analysis on the clusters and reject product outside user defined limits.

IRIS worked with the client to develop a plan forward, and spearheaded the technical design aspects of the system including:

• Vision System layout
• Vision component, optics and lighting selection
• Lighting design
• Robot/Vision communications, syncing, and calibration
• All aspects of software development for the vision system which acts as user interface, external component interface, and the “brains” behind the system.
• Reject gate control to offload robot tasks
• Development of additional vision components for 3D inspection, cluster bottom inspection, lane load monitoring, and robot fault video.

The Bread Inspection System has been installed in multiple bakeries internationally, and continues to be a success.