Getting right inside your pack An X-ray inspection system can do so much more than detect contaminants By Jim Bedford of Ishida Europe Destination: the consumer Before the arrival of X-ray inspection, the sealing of your product into its pack was an important end-point: the last stop before the consumer. Nowadays we can look into the sealed pack, and deep inside the product itself, to understand in previously undreamt of detail what the consumer will experience. Of course the technology has been developed primarily to guard against metallic or other contaminants that can cause offence or even injury. But the richness of other details it provides cannot be ignored: it offers golden opportunities to improve product quality and consumer satisfaction, to optimise manufacturing processes and to save money. Broadly speaking there are six ways in which an X-ray system can help you with your packed product, apart from its role in protecting consumers, manufacturers, retailers and brand reputations. These are counting of components, weight checking, detection of product flaws, assessment of product quality, verification of fill levels and quality control of the packaging itself. How it works The aim in all cases is to achieve recognition by the system when a pack or its contents fails to meet a required standard. Sometimes you may wish that fact to be highlighted and logged; sometimes you will want the pack to be rejected. Modern X-ray inspection systems come with sophisticated algorithms and vision inspection software that are easily adapted to carry out one or more of the six tasks for your particular product. In some cases you need to enter some data about your product, its packaging and the likely grounds for rejection, in others merely passing ‘good’ packs through the system is enough to get you started. A technology that counts X-ray inspection is the only commonly available technique that can literally count items after they have been packed into bags, trays or other containers.

X-ray inspection: can do so much more than detect contaminants Many packs contain regular arrays of products. Almost the first thing you notice when viewing an X-ray on-screen is the strong pattern that this produces, as well as any vacant spaces. The inspection system can automatically recognise the pattern and decide whether to ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ it. An excellent example would be a six pack of burgers. However, the software can also be set to perform an actual count, such as the number of pieces in a pack of chewing gum. Perhaps a better example is a less ordered system: X-ray counting works...

X-ray inspection: can do so much more than detect contaminants Complete voids in products show up even more clearly. Similarly, pieces which are under- or over-sized are readily picked up. Long, fragile products such as saltsticks or sausages are especially prone to breakage, and product integrity can be very satisfactorily monitored using an X-ray system. An interesting example is an ice-cream on a stick. The wooden stick forms a key part of the consumer experience, but it is not unknown for a temporary problem in the production process to result in the stick being damaged or wrongly oriented,...