Kloeckner-werke Ag

Gerhard Grube

Lothar Gutjahr

A reference package or packages comprised of an orderly group of properly filled compartments is moved into a testing station, where its image is picked up by a television camera. The picture signal produced by the camera is digitalized and stored in a circulating memory for repeated read-out. Thereafter, successively, a package or packages comprised of compartments to be examined, and exhibiting the same orderly arrangement as the properly filled compartments, are moved into the testing station. The picture signal produced by the camera during pick-up of the successive images is synchronously compared with reconstituted analog picture information read out from the memory. Discrepancies in the compared information result in error signals used to produce discard signals. Groups of packages, arranged in rows extending transverse and parallel to the scan lines of the camera tube, can be tested. The operator uses a selector device to establish x-coordinate zones or y-coordinate zones, or x-y sectors defined by x- and y-coordinate zones in conjunction. Error signals are automatically correlated with the zones or sectors, and thereby with the individual rows of packages or the individual packages to which the error signals are attributable, and discard signals correlated with individual rows of packages or individual packages are produced, for subsequent use at a sorting station, to eject not properly filled rows of packages or not properly filled individual packages.

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Lohne, Germany

Gerhard Grube