SubscribeOlympus High Speed Video Systems Designed For Production Troubleshooting.
Olympus has designed and developed a camera specifically for the mechanical, production or quality engineer whose motivation is to improve efficiency and productivity throughout any manufacturing line.
The Olympus product is simple and quick to set up – just power on and images are immediately seen on the i-SPEED Control Display Unit. Measurements such as line speed can be done on the CDU, with images easily transferred to a PC via flash card or Ethernet connection. More detailed analysis and report generation is then possible.
Engineers throughout industry are using high-speed video to pinpoint problems, analyse the cause and confirm the effectiveness of remedial action. Because mechanical problems occur almost anywhere on machinery, a high-speed camera has to be portable, and ideally the recorded results should be instantly available for evaluation, as the i-SPEED does not require a PC for operation it ideally satisfies this operational requirement.
“We reviewed a number of High-Speed Cameras available on the market, but the Olympus i-SPEED, with its flexibility and ease-of-use, provided us with everything we needed”, commented a senior engineer at a major can manufacturing facility.
“We use the camera extensively throughout the plant for troubleshooting and fault diagnosis. We can analyse particular areas of plant in detail. Even those areas which are currently not causing us problems can be analysed and adjusted to be even more efficient.”
The principle of fault diagnosis and evaluation holds true not only for the canning, bottling and packaging industry, but for any manufacturing process involving high-speed machinery. If this can be achieved on-line, in rest time, then the risk of downtime from mechanical breakdown or process inefficiency can be reduced, saving both time and cost.
The senior engineer further explained: “With the ability to produce in excess of 1,200 cans per minute, increasing the efficiency of our machine to produce one extra can does not sound particularly impressive. However, when you bear in mind that our production lines are running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the addition of one extra can per minute makes an incredible difference to our overall productivity.”
Videos, once reviewed by the engineer on the shop floor, can be transferred to computer hard disc for record keeping or review at a later date, either by directly connecting to the back of the Olympus i-SPEED via Ethernet or simply, and more appropriately in an engineering environment, via the removable compact flash card.
He summarised his experience with the Olympus i-SPEED camera by commenting: “The availability of a simple to use, but highly effective High Speed Video Camera to our service, quality and productivity engineers has made a considerable difference to our ability to analyse and rectify problems.”