Using TPL Vision’s powerful long bar lights, Spectrum Technology (Sweden, https://spectrum.dev/) have upgraded a vision-guided robot system to achieve increased accuracy. The application in the automotive industry includes a robot picking parts, which had to be retrained, while the vision system was upgraded with suitable powerful illumination in the form of TPL Vision’s EBAR+ products.
The system includes product flows coming in to a cell. Each flow has 5 items stacked on each other, rotating 90 degrees back and forth. In order for the project to succeed, the product, which measures ~1000×1500 mm in size, must be picked up by a robot and placed in a fixture, which requires maximum precision.
How to configure bar lights for robotics?
Bar lights are incredibly versatile and can be set up to suit almost any robotics application. They can be used to create bright field, low angle, dark field and even dome lighting. For robotics projects, it is crucial to consider the effects of ambient light, because changes in natural lighting can misguide the robots and lead to inaccuracies and even safety concerns. Since vision-guided robot systems have to be fine-tuned to identify key features, as any inconsistency in illumination can easily lead to problems requiring downtime and a loss of productivity.
Challenges
The customer had an issue with the current lighting fading in intensity. Since vision systems need stable lighting to be able to follow the patterns they were trained for, illumination had to be updated to ensure consistent results.
Solution
The chosen solution was adding 4 x 1000 mm long EBAR+ bar lights in white. The size and performance of the bar lights ensured that parts could be illuminated with high uniformity and brightness, meaning the robot could pick the parts with high precision, as intended.
Spectrum have chosen to work with TPL Vision due to the quality of illumination, which was described as “superb”, a great value, and unlike any other machine vision illumination on the market.
Due to the improvements, the system went from ~50% technical availability with the old lighting to ~98% availability with almost no stops in production. As a result of the more robust and reliable illumination, productivity drops associated with ambient/inconsistent lighting or other environmental factors can be prevented, which ensures that consistent results can be maintained.
