Introduction 

To ensure employees were protected during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond, our customer started producing their own masks to supply their work force with quality medical masks every day. Manual inspection of masks carries a very high error rate and is also a tedious and time-consuming task for human inspectors. Their preference was an cost-effective, flexible, automated solution that would be able to thoroughly inspect the mask for defects in the mask material, nose bar and ear loops. They found the ideal partner in Catalyx with over 30 years of machine vision experience to provide this solution at their US facility. 

The Solution 

Catalyx rose to the complex challenge with a solution that incorporates the Cognex ViDi inspection platform. The vision system can effectively automate the tedious quality check process by human inspectors. Over the course of 3 weeks, Catalyx team members worked to deliver this project. Vision engineers designed the in-sight job file, and mechanical engineers built and acquired the framing and the pneumatic system.  

This design was standalone integration into a mask producing machine. Raw Mask Material In -> Full medical mask out. This system implemented used the Cognex D902M Smart camera running Cognex Machine Learning software and was used for defect analysis (Cognex ViDi Red Tool) and location classification (Cognex ViDi green tool). 

The Outcome  

Thanks to this vision system, our customer can now offer high-quality masks to their workforce daily, safe in the know that have under-gone thorough inspection. 

It has effectively automated what would have been the tedious quality check process by human inspectors. It has ensured accurate and reliable quality assurance, flagging defects such as; mask material defects, cut/missing ear loop welds, missing nose bar and is able to check all the details of face masks, including the covering part, ear loops, metal strip and edges.  

If our customer, decide to switch production again in the future, they can use the exact same system to inspect a completely different product.