Stemware Inspection System

A system for the inspection of stemware for geometrical defects and glass imperfections is described in this paper in which cameras at three stations are used for enhanced defect detection. Internal glass quality, contaminants and optical nonuniformity are evaluated at the first station. The second station inspects the glass rim and stemware shape and detects internal defects such as cracks. The third station inspects the stemware base for geometrical and internal defects. Glass irregularities are optically enhanced using a striped illumination pattern and detected using morphological processing. Geometric inspection is enhanced through the use of converging illumination at the second station, while the third station utilizes telecentric optics. Progressive scan cameras and frame grabbers capable of simultaneous image capture are used at each station. The system software comprises six modules consisting of the system manager, I/O manager, inspection module for each station, and stemware sorting and logging module. Each module runs as a separate process. Applications communicate with each other through TCP/IP sockets, and can be run in one or more computers. Two personal computers are used for the system described here.