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Closure Manufacturer Slashes Downtime with Omron’s FZ3 Vision System

To improve quality control and eliminate waste, a major manufacturer of injection-molded closures upgrades its vision technology. Previous vision systems lacked visual acuity to solve this difficult application.

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Phoenix Closures is a full-service manufacturing firm specializing in injection-molded closures. Headquartered in Naperville, Ill., with additional facilities in Davenport, Iowa, and Newport, Tenn., the company serves both domestic and foreign customers. When it became difficult to identify and remedy defects in its closure liners, Phoenix embarked on a major project to address the issue by identifying the most competent industrial automation supplier that could provide them a turn-key vision inspection solution to eventually be integrated into their day-to-day operations.  

“We had been working with vision for several years, and we’d tried several manufacturers and vision systems,” says Merle Smith, senior projects engineer at Phoenix. These efforts had met with limited success.

So Phoenix assembled a Corporate Vision Team comprised of technical and production personnel from all the company’s locations. The team was charged with identifying which automation/vision supplier Phoenix should work with moving forward.

“We did an analysis of eight or nine different vision suppliers, then boiled it down to who we thought was best,” says Smith. “With all factors considered—service, sales, depth and strength of the company, as well as technical considerations—Omron came out clearly on top.”

At this point, Phoenix hadn’t decided which Omron vision system would solve their major inspection challenges: detecting defects in cap molding and liners. Many of these gasket/cap assemblies are white on white, making it difficult to detect defects. Another challenge was foil liners, used on many caps, which have reflective properties that make it difficult to see imperfections.

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