Optics: measuring and testing – Inspection of flaws or impurities – Transparent or translucent material
Reexamination Certificate
1999-04-21
2001-08-14
Rosenberger, Richard A. (Department: 2877)
Optics: measuring and testing
Inspection of flaws or impurities
Transparent or translucent material
C356S428000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06275287
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a check detector for glass bottle neck and finish portion.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In manufacturing glass bottles, there are cases in which so-called checks like cracks or seeds and blisters are generated in the wall thickness of the neck and finish portion.
For the seeds and bisters, no problem is caused in the viewpoint of products when they are small, but since the checks are critical defects that would result in breakage of glass bottles, the presence of checks is optically detected.
There are many types of checks that can be generated in a glass bottle neck and finish portion, such as those generated in simple threaded necks and necks for crown caps. For example, in the simple threaded neck and finish, several types of checks such as vertical, horizontal, and other checks may exist, but to optically detect the presence of these checks by types, the following method was conventionally used. That is, in the course of the handling route the, transfer of the glass bottles was intermittently stopped and with glass bottles rotated at the stopped position, a light emitter for emitting the neck and finish portion of the rotating glass bottle with light was located in the width direction on one side of the handling route, while a light receiver for detecting the reflected light totally reflected at the checks at the glass bottle neck and finish portion was located on the other side in the width direction of the handling route, and based on an output when the light receiver received the reflected light, the existence of, for example, vertical checks was detected.
Now, since the checks are generated without any directionality, checks must be detected with the following points taken into account. That is,
{circle around (1)} there is a boundary of reflection because checks shine due to total reflection, and
{circle around (2)} there is a case in which reflected light due to checks may not exit to the outside.
Consequently, hitherto, in order to improve the detection accuracy in detecting the presence of, for example, vertical checks, one each of light emitter and light receiver is paired, and a plurality of pairs of emitters and receivers are installed. And by varying the light emitting direction of the emitter and light receiving direction of the receiver for each pair and at the same time giving consideration to the arrangement of a plurality of pairs for easy detection of vertical checks, detection of vertical checks is able to be carried out under various optical conditions.
However, there are still the following problems:
{circle around (1)} because there are extremely many combinations of emitters and receivers, the detector directly detects even the light transmitting through the neck and finish portion if detection is carried out at one place only, and
{circle around (2)} total reflections other than vertical checks are also detected. For example, reflected light which is totally reflected at the mold seam formed at the glass bottle neck and finish portion is also detected, and there is a case in which non-defective glass bottles may be judged defective.
{circle around (3)} when a plurality of emitters are simultaneously lighted, that is, when emitting beam is simultaneously emitted from multiple directions, the emitting beams interfere with one another, degrading the detection ratio, and at the same time, small seeds and bisters generated in the neck and finish portion excessively reflect, resulting in degraded detection accuracy. And for the corrective actions, turning off part of the emitters and receivers as required among a plurality of pairs of emitters and receivers, or degrading the detection sensitivity may eliminate the combination required for essential vertical check detection, resulting in degraded detection ratio.
By the way, the present applicant proposed a check detector of a glass bottle neck and finish portion with emitters and receivers arranged and suited for vertical checks detection (Publication of Unexamined Patent Application No. Hei 4-294262) but even if the above-mentioned problems may be able to be overcome,
(A) the results obtained by arrangement of a plurality of pairs were to detect the presence of vertical checks. That is, for example, vertical checks at the top (upper vertical checks), vertical checks at the intermediate portion (middle vertical checks), vertical checks at the bottom (lower vertical checks), etc. generated in this order at the top, middle, and bottom positions of the neck and finish portion were unable to be identified and detected.
In addition,
(B) because, vertical checks were unable to be sorted unless influences of noises contained in detection signals taken into the receiver were reduced, the data corresponding to the detection signal must be differentiated at the signal processor mounted at the stage after the receiver. That is, because the detection signal has an inclination corresponding to the signal of vertical checks for each vertical check appearing in the above-mentioned data, it is necessary to perform processing to remove the noise by carrying out time differentiation and to leave vertical check signals only.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Under these circumstances, it is a main object of this invention to provide a check detector of a glass bottle neck and finish portion that can improve the check detection accuracy by positively reducing rejection of non-defective glass bottles.
In order to achieve this object, this invention is characterised by being comprised of a glass bottle rotating unit for rotating a glass bottle successively conveyed to a fixed position and around the glass bottle in the course of glass bottle handling route, a slide block which can change position freely in the width direction and vertical direction of the handling route, a plurality of light emitters for emitting light to the neck and finish portion of the glass bottle as it is rotated at the fixed position with light mounted to the slide block, while the emitted region of the emitting light by a plurality of the light emitters is fixed to one position and the relevant emitting light is converged to the emitted region from directions which differ one another, a plurality of light receivers equipped with light receiving sensors for detecting the reflected light reflected at the checks generated at the neck and finish portion, the reflected light reflected at the molds seams formed at the neck and finish portion, and direct light transmitted through the neck and finish portion via lenses mounted to the slide block, a light emitter control section for switching a plurality of the light emitters successively and repeatedly in the light emitting condition, and a light receiver control section for constantly operating a plurality of light receivers in the light emitting condition so that each of the reflected lights and direct light are inputted as data, wherein each of the light receiving sensors is composed with diode arrays comprising a plurality of light receiving elements divided in advance so as to correspond to the vertical position of the neck and finish portion and at the same time, the data inputted as reflected light reflected at the seam and the data inputted as the direct light for transmitting through the neck and finish portion are intended to be deleted, respectively.
By the above-mentioned characteristic configuration, when, for example, vertical checks at the glass bottle neck and finish portion are detected, a plurality of emitters are switched successively to the light emitting condition and emitting beams are emitted toward the glass bottle neck and finish portion from a plurality of different directions to one place of the emitted region, the detected portion, and the presence of the vertical checks is thereby able to be detected simultaneously at many places.
That is, as shown in FIG.
1
and
FIG. 3
, the emitted region S of emitting beam L by a plurality (for example, 12 pieces) of emitters
21
-
32
is fixed to one place for t
Nihon Yamamura Glass Co., Ltd.
Price and Gess
Rosenberger Richard A.
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