UK’s Shelton Vision has developed a groundbreaking and unique new fabric inspection technique for accurately detecting the most subtle of defects on patterned fabrics during high speed production.
The patent-pending system has been incorporated into Shelton Vision’s WebSpector platform and validated via factory trials on a purpose-built full scale in-house demonstration technique with sophisticated fabric conveyance abilities.
As an effect, a foremost system has already been requested by a manufacturer of both plain and patterned fabrics, including camouflage, in Colombia.
This heeds the successful closing of a 21-month Innovate UK project in which strategies for the solution of complex pattern deformations were generated by machine vision and computer scientists in the company, backed up by the machine vision and robotics department at Loughborough University.
Usually, the standard methods for defect detection depend on human inspection which is inadequate, with detection rates under 65%, while the Shelton WebSpector machine vision system presents a sophisticated platform for automatic defect detection of over 97%, but until now has been restricted to plain textiles.
“What our new system basically does is essentially make the ‘good’ pattern invisible to the detection software,” said Mark Shelton, Managing Director and CEO, Shelton Vision.
“Building on our market leading vision system for plain textiles, we have developed template matching techniques for the resolution of complex pattern deformations in order for the system to pick up defects in the pattern as well as underlying defects.”
