October 2007– Visi-tech solve inspection problem for Field Boxmore Wrexham.

When Field Boxmore Wrexham were confronted with a challenging web inspection problem and clearly nothing on the market to meet their requirement, Bruce Reynolds, Operation Director of the North Wales plant, turned to Visi-tech Systems Limited.

Producing self adhesive labels on a new Edale Alpha UV Flexo machine, Field Boxmore found themselves in a catch twenty two situation. They wanted to install a video web inspection system onto the press in order to monitor print quality, but they also wanted to keep an eye on the print to die-cut register.

The problem with this is that the matrix is stripped off very soon after die cutting, and so there is no space in which to place a camera to view the print and die cut together. If the camera is placed after the seperation of the matrix and substrate, then the print and cut can be viewed, but the register marks will have been stripped off with the matrix. If the camera is placed before the die cut, then of course the print to cut register cannot be viewed.

This is by no means an uncommon problem, and this same scenario applies to most narrow web machines. Most printers simply accept this compromise but Field Boxmore Wrexham wanted an acceptable solution.

In response to this problem Visi-tech came up with a custom solution consisting of two cameras. The main camera was mounted just after the last printing unit enabling complete viewing of the print, while a second camera was placed to view the stripped matrix before it was rewound. This in itself posed a significant challenge, since the Edale Alpa is one of the most compact machines on the market and there was very little space in which to place the second camera. As a result Visi-tech developed a miniature web viewing camera measuring just 120 x 100 x 70mm.

Alex Lyne, Product Manager at Visi-tech explained, “It was certainly a challenge to make such a small camera, and we were very pleased with the results. As far as I know this is the smallest strobe integrated web inspection camera in the country, possibly the smallest in the world. In addition to the development on the camera, we have also made some changes to our control software to allow the main camera to constantly scan over the web while the secondary camera remains fixed on the register mark. With both cameras viewed simultaneously on a single split screen monitor, it really is a very neat solution.”

Bruce added, “I am very pleased with the way in which Visi-tech addressed the problem. When it bacame apparent that there was no off-the-shelf product available to us, Visi-tech were quick to run tests with their cameras and provide us with an alternative proposal. The resulting custom installation is really quite clever, and does the job just fine.”

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