High-tech quality inspection in pulp & paper manufacturing, Christian Eikmeyer, Product Manager, ISRA VISION

PAPERTECHNOLOGYINTERNATIONAL
High-techpulpquality inspection in pulp & paper manufacturing
Industry Challenges: Quality, Speed, and Sustainability
Christian Eikmeyer, Product Manager, ISRA VISION
INTRODUCTION:
The pulp, paper, and board industry face growing demands for higher product quality standards, driven by ever more stringent
customer requirements. End-users require defect-free surfaces for printing and packaging, increasingly making quality control crucial
in preventing costly product rejections and maintaining market competitiveness. Simultaneously, production speeds have significantly
increased, with modern paper machines often operating at 2,000 meters per minute or above. At such speeds, detecting small defects
accurately and promptly becomes challenging.
Additionally, paper manufacturers face pressures to reduce energy consumption and minimize their environmental footprint.
Traditional inspection methods often require intensive lighting setups, increasing both energy usage and operational costs. Moreover, the
wide variety of defect types—from pinholes and thin spots to surface scratches and color variations—necessitates flexible, accurate, and
reliable inspection technologies.
New modern cameras combining imaging technologies while
addressing industry challenges
High Dynamic Range (HDR) Imaging
On heavy grades, significant light intensity is typically
required to detect impurities effectively. However, with high-intensity
lighting, formation defects, such as thin spots, can falsely appear as
real holes. High Dynamic Range imaging addresses this challenge
by accurately distinguishing between actual defects like holes and
surface irregularities like thin spots. HDR technology performs
multiple parallel scans at varying exposure levels, merging these
scans into a detailed composite image. This method ensures clear
visibility of both bright and dark defects simultaneously, significantly
enhancing detection accuracy and minimizing false defect alerts.
Combined Optical Setups (COMBI Mode)
Traditionally, identifying diverse defect types required
multiple optical setups, complicating the inspection system and
increasing infrastructure requirements. COMBI Mode addresses this
by combining multiple optical inspection setups into one streamlined
solution. Utilizing one camera bank equipped with multiple
illumination channels, COMBI Mode performs simultaneous scans
under various illumination conditions. This consolidated approach
reduces hardware complexity, installation space, and overall
investment costs, enabling efficient and comprehensive inspection
with minimal infrastructure.
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