Inline Linatronic inspection machine detects water droplets on PET

The Margon Brunnen in the Müglitz Valley near Dresden has invested in quality control for its bottling hall two times over.
For its returnable-glass line, the mineral water bottler has installed an inline Linatronic, and the combined line for PET and glass showcased a debut for a Linatronic equipped with four cameras for a “Full Front View” in terms of side-wall inspection and concomitantly maximised detection accuracy.
Rotary inspectors provide outstanding inspection accuracy, because each container is inspected from the front in its full 360° circumference. Rotary machines require more space than their inline counterparts, are more laborious to clean, and need more time for changing over to different container types.
That’s why Krones has developed an inline Linatronic that meets the requirements for fast changeover, easy cleaning and small space requirement. To achieve a high inspection accuracy in the inline Linatronic with a full front view, a total of four cameras, two at the infeed and two at the discharge, inspect each container from the front via four mirror assemblies, thus providing a total bottle monitoring angle of more than 360° – with a frontal view throughout. The four-side inspection unit with Full Front View identifies water droplets on PET bottles. Due to the effect of high surface tension on new PET bottles, water droplets form on the surface of the container, whereas older PET bottles exhibit no droplets, the water runs off them. Normal inspection technology identifies the water droplets as dirt particles, and consequently OK bottles are erroneously rejected. With the new software for water droplet inspection, the machine can tell when water droplets are all that is present, and the bottle will not be rejected. This has enabled Margon Brunnen to halve the amount of faulty rejections.