Vision Inspection: Advanced Color Tools for Advanced Color Applications

Color Applications

Part Sortation

Often, color is the only feature that differentiates parts, such as caps, containers, or pharmaceutical tablets.

Color Recognition and Matching

In the auto industry, suppliers found that human inspectors have a difficult time in verifying that side-view mirrors are assembled on the correct car body. Humans often mismatch colors, while color vision tools can reliably distinguish between them.

Assembly Verification

Identifying that the right part has been used during assembly can be challenging when the parts is very small, or when identifying marks such as character strings or barcodes are not easily visible. In these cases, color offers an option for accurately identifying parts.

Inspection

When color is the most unique aspect of the part, color vision can be used to determine if an item is good or bad. For example, verifying that a red LED is present and bright enough or was properly assembled.

Color Vision Tools

Resolution 16-bit color

 allows the system to recognize 65,000 individual colors—plenty for most applications. But applications where color variations are more subtle may require more sensitive 24-bit color resolution, which enables the system to see 16 million individual color variations...more than can be detected by the human eye.

Color Extraction

A pre-trained color is extracted out, pixel by pixel, for processing with greyscale vision tools. Powerful color extraction tools should allow for a combination of colors to be extracted at the same time.

Color Matching 

Ensure an accurate color match between components used in the same product while interpreting subtle color differences. In the white color family, for example, shades might include white, off-white, champagne, pearl and cream.

Today’s color vision tools have come a long way in precision, reliability and ease of use, making color systems a really attractive option for improving manufacturing performance.