New Packaging Equipment: January 2021
The latest X-ray, metal detection, checkweighing, and vision systems feature multi-scanning capabilities, machine connectivity, and improved operator learning tools. These upgrades allow the equipment to better detect small foreign objects, reduce false rejects, and handle a wide range of products to ensure maximum food safety. Bakery and snack producers use inspection and detection equipment to improve their quality control and food safety programs.
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Eriez
Website: www.eriez.com
Equipment Snapshot: Eriez now offers 6- and 18-inch belt sizes for its Xtreme Metal Detector conveyor systems with automatic rejects. They are designed with push arm or air blast rejects, lockbox, reject confirmation, stainless steel motor/reducer, improved guarding, emergency stop, and side guides. An icon-driven interface is patterned after cell phones.
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Thermo-Fisher Scientific
Website: https://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home.html
Equipment Snapshot: The Sentinel 1000 Selectscan metal detector, from Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA, enables the user to select the ideal frequency to detect ferrous, non-ferrous, and stainless steel foreign objects. Autolearn software guides the user through product setup.
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Bunting
Website: https://buntingmagnetics.com/
Equipment Snapshot: Bunting has developed an Automatic Protocol Export, which allows its metal detectors to download events automatically by logging on to a specified location on the customer’s network server. It has a variety of event triggers—by batch, product, daily, or weekly.
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Heat and Control
Website: www.heatandcontrol.com
Equipment Snapshot: With its partner, CEIA, Heat and Control, Hayward, CA, recently introduced the THS/MS21 multi-spectrum metal detector, with optional USDA-certified construction. It utilizes a wide spectrum of frequencies, thus eliminating false rejects caused by product effect without having to reduce metal detection sensitivity. Autolearn software scans products in a single pass to reduce setup time and inspection errors. Bluetooth connectivity eliminates the need to access the detector’s interior for programming and data collection; ethernet connection also is available.
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METTLER TOLEDO
Website: www.mt.com/us/en/home.html
Equipment Snapshot: Mettler Toledo Product Inspection recently introduced the X34 X-ray system, which uses optimum power generators with Autolearn software to optimize the generator power based on the product being inspected. Thus, a novice X-ray user can set up an X34 system in minutes by passing a sample product through the system, then following user instructions on-screen. Bakery and snack products require low levels of power, and the use of OPG results in even lower power consumption, the company reports.
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Fortress Technology
Website: www.fortresstechnology.com
Equipment Snapshot: Fortress Technology Inc., Toronto, offers the Interceptor DF metal detector, which uses multiple coil sets to drive the electromagnetic fields in different directions, looking for signals over a broad spectrum, from multiple angles.
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EyePro System
Website: www.eyeprosystem.com
Equipment Snapshot: New high-definition cameras also are improving inspection and detection capabilities. For example, EyePro System USA Inc., Chicago, has introduced the Multi-Eye system, which integrates hyperspectral imaging technology for advanced foreign body detection and classification (on product surfaces) with product composition and moisture distribution analysis.
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Cognex
Website: www.cognex.com
Equipment Snapshot: Cognex Corp., Natick, MA, recently introduced the In-Sight D900 embedded vision system, which features deep learning software inside an industrial-grade smart camera. It is designed to solve a broad range of complex, in-line inspection applications, including optical character recognition, assembly verification, and defect detection. By combining the self-learning ability of a human inspector with the consistency of a vision system, the In-Sight D900 expands the limits of what can be inspected in food processing automation, the company reports. The system can be set up using a few image samples.
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Invert Robotics
Website: https://invertrobotics.com/
Equipment Snapshot: Invert Robotics Inc., Dublin, Ireland, offers robotic inspections that minimize or eliminate the risk of bacterial, product-to-product, and human-to-product contamination. The robots can detect defects as small as 1/16 mm—impossible to see with the naked eye. The data collected transmits in real time to clients and a full analytical report, including marked defect locations and images, is delivered in 72 hours.