Enhancing Machine Vision Efficiency: How Modular Lighting Configurations Reduce Costs and Improve Quality
TPL Vision
Experts in high brightness LED Illumination Solutions for Machine Vision, Identification and Robotics applications.
Effective machine vision systems rely heavily on optimal lighting conditions to ensure accurate and reliable image capture. Poor lighting can lead to misidentifications and costly downtime, which is why selecting the right lighting solution early in the project lifecycle is crucial.
Applications differ a lot based on the object characteristics such as the surface, colours, the object-camera relationship, the environmental conditions, the lighting technique used – which is why systems designers need to shift their attention to modular illumination solutions. Modular illumination offers the flexibility to adapt to various application requirements, ensuring optimal performance and reducing the risk of issues caused by inconsistent lighting.
Ensure Consistent Lighting Early
Reliable image capture and analysis in automated inspection processes depends on consistent lighting conditions. Early identification of the application challenges reduces the need for troubleshooting and adjustments that lead to costly downtime. Addressing lighting early on prevents the need for costly retrofitting and minimises the need for additional image processing or hardware.
Reduce Costs with Modular Lighting
During the testing phase, users often end up having to invest in a lot of different illumination sources. This leads to unwanted spare products, difficulties training the maintenance team, lack of flexibility and no cost optimisation. Solving a lot of applications with just one product provides flexibility and future-proofs the application.
Inconsistent lighting during inspection leads to errors in image analysis, resulting in costly downtime. TPL Vision's Modular Ringlight (MRL) provides consistent illumination, reducing the need for troubleshooting and adjustments.
Benefits of Flexible Illumination
Different parts require different features from the chosen illumination. The MRL packs many features into a single lighting unit, making it an extremely versatile tool that can be calibrated according to the exact requirements of the application.
Key features of the MRL include:
Adaptability for Changing Production Lines
Production lines where multiple products or features are examined require additional flexibility. For production lines with changing products, the MRL is a great option that can be adapted to a different lighting technique in a matter of seconds. It is ideal for fast-moving code reading applications such as checking barcodes, data matrix codes, dot peen markings or best-before dates, as well as for quality inspection systems dealing with challenging surfaces or defect detection applications requiring specialised illumination.
Seamless Control
Control and integration can often be challenging in machine vision systems. It's essential that the lighting solution integrates smoothly with the camera and vision system, ensuring synchronised image capture and processing. The MRL simplifies this process with its sector control and bi-color output, offering seamless control. Users can switch between manual and remote operation, allowing easy integration with automation systems for greater flexibility.
Minimising Shadows, Reflections and Glare
Unwanted shadows and glare can obscure important features in images. The MRL’s dome, low angle, and dark field lighting attachments are ideal for shiny surfaces, offering precise lighting techniques to minimise reflections.
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Dome lighting provides diffuse, even lighting often compared to illumination on a cloudy day, due to the non-directional reflected light it produces. The diffuse illumination of a dome light ensures that images contain less glare and shadows; ideal for industrial automation inspection tasks involving shiny or complex details that require uniform visibility.
Using the low angle accessory with a short working distance, the?Modular Ringlight creates a diffuse light source with a 45° angle of incidence. Low angle lighting is ideal for highlighting surface textures and detecting imperfections, such as scratches, etchings, or slight variations in surface height. It enhances contrast on flat or slightly curved surfaces, making it particularly useful for inspecting markings, subtle defects, or fine details that would otherwise be missed.
Dark field lighting can be used at variable working distances for emphasising surface features such as scratches, dents or engravings. This technique illuminates the object at an angle that causes light to scatter off any irregularities, making imperfections stand out, and minimising shadows that could obscure critical details.
AI and Deep Learning Illumination Challenges
Artificial Intelligence applications rely on large datasets of consistently high-quality images for effective training. Lighting consistency plays a pivotal role in ensuring the accuracy and reliability of AI models, as variations in illumination can introduce noise and affect performance. Deep learning algorithms, in particular, perform significantly better when trained on high-contrast images where features of interest are clearly defined.
This is where independent sector control, multi-wavelength lighting, and modularity play a crucial role by accelerating the training process through providing sharp, well-contrasted images that enhance model learning. Training AI models under consistent lighting conditions early in development is crucial for their success in real-world scenarios. Factory production lines, for example, often present varying environmental conditions like ambient light and unwanted reflections. By using robust, modular lighting solutions from the beginning, these challenges can be minimised. This ensures the AI model is trained on data that closely matches real-world conditions, eliminating the need for retraining.
Modular Lighting Solutions: A Summary
In machine vision systems, lighting is a critical factor that directly impacts image quality, accuracy, and overall system performance. Modular lighting solutions, like TPL Vision’s Modular Ringlight, offer flexibility and control, allowing system designers to tackle a wide range of applications with a single product. By enabling early configuration, adaptable lighting techniques, and real-time optimisation, modular lighting simplifies the product selection process, future-proofs the application and reduces the need for costly adjustments or retrofitting.
The MRL’s ability to switch between direct, dome, low angle, and dark field lighting ensures that even the most complex surfaces and materials can be inspected reliably. This versatility is especially vital in environments where inspection requirements change frequently. In applications using AI and Deep Learning, where consistently high-quality images are needed for training models, the precision and adaptability of modular lighting solutions make them indispensable.
In summary, modular lighting solutions provide significant benefits by reducing costs, simplifying system integration, and improving performance. By investing in versatile, high-quality lighting early in the design process, users can future-proof their machine vision applications, enhancing productivity and accuracy across the board.
Get in touch to learn more about Modular lighting configurations for machine vision by visiting the TPL Vision website.
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