X-Ray0 pages

Getting right
inside your pack
An X-ray inspection system can do so much more than detect contaminants
By Jim Bedford of Ishida Europe

Destination: the consumer
Before the arrival of X-ray inspection, the sealing of your product into its
pack was an important end-point: the last stop before the consumer.
Nowadays we can look into the sealed pack, and deep inside the
product itself, to understand in previously undreamt of detail what the
consumer will experience.
Of course the technology has been developed primarily to guard against
metallic or other contaminants that can cause offence or even injury.
But the richness of other details it provides cannot be ignored: it offers
golden opportunities to improve product quality and consumer
satisfaction, to optimise manufacturing processes and to save money.
Broadly speaking there are six ways in which an X-ray system can help
you with your packed product, apart from its role in protecting
consumers, manufacturers, retailers and brand reputations.
These are counting of components, weight checking, detection of
product flaws, assessment of product quality, verification of fill levels and
quality control of the packaging itself.

How it works
The aim in all cases is to achieve recognition by the system when a pack
or its contents fails to meet a required standard. Sometimes you may
wish that fact to be highlighted and logged; sometimes you will want the
pack to be rejected.
Modern X-ray inspection systems come with sophisticated algorithms
and vision inspection software that are easily adapted to carry out one or
more of the six tasks for your particular product. In some cases you
need to enter some data about your product, its packaging and the
likely grounds for rejection, in others merely passing ‘good’ packs
through the system is enough to get you started.

A technology that counts
X-ray inspection is the only commonly available technique that can
literally count items after they have been packed into bags, trays or
other containers.

www.ishidaeurope.com