Jump to content

Products & Technology

A group blog by Gibson Employees

  • entries
    13
  • comments
    6
  • views
    310

Contributors to this blog

About this blog

Interesting information about products Gibson distributes and industrial technology.

Entries in this blog

ViDi Read – Where Traditional OCR Tools Fail, Deep Learning Succeeds

ViDi Read – Where Traditional OCR Tools Fail, Deep Learning Succeeds

Expiration dates, lot codes, and other important texts are on all our consumer products.  Federal regulations require that food and medical related items have this important information and that it is easily read by the end customer.  Consequently, manufacturers are responsible for making sure these texts are present and accurate.  Traditional optical character recognition (OCR) tool sets use a combination of image filters and pattern matching to determine which character is being read.  A large
Mark Guida

Mark Guida

0
How do machine vision cameras work?

How do machine vision cameras work?

In the 2D industrial imaging realm, I am going to split the cameras into 2 groups: Monochrome and Color cameras. They both have different applications and we usually see monochrome cameras used in the automation industry and machine vision applications. Take a look at the bottom infographic for how to turn light into a digital file. Industrial cameras are digital cameras so this applies to them too. Light hits the subject (no light, no image), a lens collects the light then gets r
Batu Sipka

Batu Sipka

0
Mitsubishi CC-Link Networks Simplified

Mitsubishi CC-Link Networks Simplified

Mitsubishi CC-Link networks have grown substantially over the past decade and it’s no wonder that there is some confusion on the various versions.  This blog is to give a quick overview and hopefully clear up some of what can be rather muddy waters. Let’s start with what CC-Link is:  CC-Link is a FAMILY of protocols created and maintained by the CC-Link Partner Association (https://www.cc-link.org/) Very much like other industrial communication protocols, it is used to communicate betw
Bryon Sol

Bryon Sol

0
4 Reasons Why You Might Need a 7 Axis Robot

4 Reasons Why You Might Need a 7 Axis Robot

I am going to be honest here, I didn’t think I needed a 7th axis on a robot. I thought it was a marketing gimmick or an additional linkage to make the kinematics equations harder… I was wrong. Disclaimer: There are two different options to get 7 different axis; 1) a 7 axis robot,  2) an additional 7th axis for a 6 axis robot. Two different things. I am going to be talking about 7 axis robots in this post rather than adding an elevator or a slide to a 6 axis arm. Save time on the d
Batu Sipka

Batu Sipka

0
Cobots, traditional robots, or something in between, how to choose the right robot for you

Cobots, traditional robots, or something in between, how to choose the right robot for you

With the introduction of cobots (collaborative robots) into the manufacturing environment, many people struggle to understand the limits of cobots and rush to assume that every new application they see is a good fit for a cobot.  There are several factors to look at when deciding between a cobot, a traditional robot, or a traditional robot with integrated safety components for an application.  Amount of human interaction Proximity of human traffic Process positioning toleranc
David Miller

David Miller

1
Vision Sensor or Vision System - What’s the Difference and Which Vision Solution is for You?

Vision Sensor or Vision System - What’s the Difference and Which Vision Solution is for You?

For most of us in the industrial automation field, seeing a vision solution on a machine is commonplace.  Some of us have specified them, some of us have programmed them, and some of us only know, “that’s the vision system over there.”  With the latter being the most common, it becomes difficult for some to decide between the types of vision solutions.  There are typically two types of self-contained (no separate controllers required) options: vision sensors and vision systems.  There is a third
Mark Guida

Mark Guida

1
System Architecture and Requirements Documents

System Architecture and Requirements Documents

Following on the heels of my blog about Ethernet Protocols, I think it’s worth discussing System Architecture and Equipment Requirements.  Over the past several years I’ve been on what I consider the wrong end of system architecture gone wrong and had to help people work their way out of a tough spot on a more than one occasion.  And the reason that the architecture has gone wrong is usually the same: either lack of equipment requirements or poorly written equipment requirements. So what do
Bryon Sol

Bryon Sol

1
Where do Mitsubishi CC-Link IE Field Network Basic servo amplifiers fit in!

Where do Mitsubishi CC-Link IE Field Network Basic servo amplifiers fit in!

There is always debate about when Mitsubishi’s new servo amplifiers such as MR-J4 and MR-JE CC-Link IE Field Basic should be used? To understand this you need to step back and understand what functionality they bring to the wealth of product offering Mitsubishi has in their toolbox. The biggest advantage is that there is no need for extra motion control modules. It is based on CC-link IE Field protocol which in a full functionality mode is a Gigabit based deterministic protocol over Ethernet. Ho
Al Armin

Al Armin

0
Ethernet is not a Protocol

Ethernet is not a Protocol

Not that long ago, Ethernet wasn’t common on PLCs and other industrial devices.  Even 10 years ago you often had to buy a separate option card to add Ethernet to your PLC.  But now it has become ubiquitous and with it has come a plethora of terminology and misunderstanding. I often hear customers ask, “does this PLC support Ethernet communications?” Unfortunately, the answer for most current PLCs is yes.  Why is this an unfortunate answer? The problem is Ethernet is not a communications sta
Bryon Sol

Bryon Sol

1
Why Choosing the Correct End of Arm Tooling is Important?

Why Choosing the Correct End of Arm Tooling is Important?

If you don’t have the right end of arm tooling for your application, it might not matter how good of a robot you pick. Robots and the end of arm tooling go hand in hand together.  (Please read my other blog “5 Major Factors to Consider When Choosing a Robot” to get a better idea on how to choose a robot) Case 1: Let’s pick an application for a vacuum gripper, a bottle pack out machine. The bottles have flat caps and are fairly easy to get a seal with almost any vacuum cups that are the
Batu Sipka

Batu Sipka

0
5 Major Factors to Consider When Choosing a Robot

5 Major Factors to Consider When Choosing a Robot

There are 5 major factors that I think about when I am specifying a robot for an application; reach, payload, speed, application type/versatility and lastly, cost. Reach Reach is one of the most important factors to getting the right size robot for your application. Some applications are as easy as just a simple pick and place and you can measure from the pick position to the place position and verify what kind of a reach you need from your robot. However, sometimes you n
Batu Sipka

Batu Sipka

0
5 Steps to Implement a Cobot

5 Steps to Implement a Cobot

I've been supporting the implementation of a Kassow KR1410 collaborative robot for a pack out application, I wanted to provide some tips on integrating a collaborative robot based on my experiences. Fully understand the system requirements I cannot emphasize how important it is to understand the system requirements, or if there is a machine that already does a similar job it is very important to study that machine and fully understand the process. After I’m confident in the re
Batu Sipka

Batu Sipka

1
Is Vision Guided Pick and Place Really That Scary?

Is Vision Guided Pick and Place Really That Scary?

Let’s say you are trying to implement a pick and place application with your robot. Industrial robots are amazing in terms of going to the place they were told to go. But what if that place we told them to go changes constantly and we don’t know where the part is going to be next time around. That’s when we use machine vision’s help to guide our robot to the right pick location. The general idea is that a vision system needs to be looking at the potential pick locations, and tell the
Batu Sipka

Batu Sipka

1
×
×
  • Create New...