How Automatic Metrology Systems Help to Increase Product Quality While Saving Production Costs and Time

Presented by Hans Oerley, Dr. Schenk GmbH

Plastic films are produced for a wide range of applications: for packaging of food, functional films for LCD-displays, films for organic solar modules and OLEDs and many more. Focusing on the production process, starting with the base material and followed by converting steps, we can find out that due to the high requirements on the film materials as well as complex layer configurations a precise control of the production process is essential in order to optimize the production costs.

Before considering the integration of an Automatic Optical Inspection system (AOI) into a production line, one main question comes up: Why is it necessary to spend money for this investment, as manual quality control by human inspectors seems to be sufficient ? A few simple calculations can show that manual inspection covers only a minor part of the web material, a tremendous high number of defects are not detected in this way and defective material is delivered to the customer. Going through this chain of facts it is finally quite easy to find good arguments for investing in an AOI.