An in-line, non-destructive, inspection system for voids, lumps and hollow edges in gypsum boards. A very useful tool for making necessary adjustments on the wet-end like correct slurry mixing. The system is a thermal imaging system working with infrared radiation (IR). Infrared radiation is not visible for the human eye but the system IR Thermography camera with imaging software converts the thermal/radiated energy variations over the gypsum board to a visual image. There will be clear differences in radiation from the air in voids and hollow edges, the “normal” plaster and lumps with higher water contents.
The state-of-the-art IR camera has a 320x240 pixel detector, equls 76 800 picture elements, each with a sensitivity of 0.1ºC/0.2ºF. It continuously, 50times per sec, gives an complete thermal image of the board over a length of about 1,2m. The combination of high resolution, high sensitivity and high speed imaging enables the system to work with even the highest line speeds (200m/min) and that it can detect defects down to 6mm in diameter.
The system will be located prior to the knife inspecting a single stream of boards. The camera is monitoring the gypsum boards from above, mounted on the supplied mechanical frame.
Some reasons why a VoidScan system is needed
The system contains:
- Infrared, IR, camera with resolution 320x240
- Camera frame and enclosure
- Processing unit with Imaging board and I/O-board
- Industrial PC with 15” touch screen in dust-, water- and oil sealed enclosure (NEMA 12 rated)
- Application software
The system IR camera in its enclosure on the mounting frame
Software functions:
- Run-Time screen displays last captured image with voids and lumps highlighted
- Voids and lump counts displayed by location and size
- User settable board zones (Left taper, Left, Center, Right, Right Taper) and void sizes (Small, Medium, Large)
- Trending diagrams showing frequency of defects per size totally or for each specific zone
- Warning and alarm output signals with selectable defect frequency limits
- Logging of all data to text files, local or remote databases
- Recipe handling
- Security. Password protection in up to four levels for every registered user to different parts of the software
Operators software screen dump showing last image voids and accumulated
for each void size and board zone.
Several voids and a single lump as seen by Imaging Software