This year, Sidel became the exclusive distributor of Pressco’s integrated inspection system for blow molders in Europe and Asia. This agreement is an extension of an already long-standing collaboration between the two companies.
Pressco’s Intellispec™ PET container vision inspection system performs a visual inspection of all sides of a blow-molded container. It can detect areas of stress on PET bottles that can eventually lead to leaks and misshapen bottles.
The Intellispec system uses three cameras integrated into the blow molding machine. The cameras send the information to an attached electronics cabinet and user interface where an operator can effectively troubleshoot any problems within the machine.
The general manager (name withheld upon request) of a large PET bottle manufacturer in the Southeast where Sidel/Pressco technologies are deployed has this to say about the role of machine vision: “We did our homework and got the best with Sidel. As our plant got bigger and bigger and there were more bottles at stake, you can only visually inspect so much in quality through human effort. To meet the goals of our customer, we have to assure them that not just most of the bottles are of high quality, but all the bottles are of high quality. You can’t do that by random sampling. It became apparent as we made more and more bottles that we had to have a way to look at 100 percent of the bottles. That’s why we looked into the vision system business.”
See the story that goes with this sidebar: Machinery with a vision
