Camera inspection system SMARTSCAN

quality controlhole detectionfor the printing industry

100% inspection systems are becoming ever more important due to the high requirements in the labeling market. The consequence of the challenging requirements is that, in many areas, goods may not reach the ultimate consignee without a 100% check. This hurdle presents many printers with a major challenge. With SMARTSCAN, Erhardt+Leimer is offering an innovative solution that even goes beyond 100%. SMARTSCAN is the first 200% inspection system developed specially for narrow-web printing and finishing machines. The 200% inspection reliably detects print defects, damage to the material and missing labels. SMARTSCAN can be used not only for quality control in the labels market, but also for the checking of other printing applications, such as in packaging printing. The checking of unprinted, homogeneous materials, such as paper or film, is also possible. SMARTSCAN uses a unique, double image acquisition method for the inspection. Here, two image streams are acquired with a temporal offset – once with incident light and in parallel with transmitted light. Each of these image streams is compared with a dedicated reference image (golden template) and checked for defects. The advantage is that, along with classic print defects, also material defects such as damage in the label or on the carrier, unremoved matrix, offset on the die cutting position, splice points or residue/insects on the rear of the label become visible. There is also special hole detection for films and foil.