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Profiler™ Fabric Inspection

Automatic Fabric Inspection & Quality Monitoring of Textiles

COMVIS Profiler™ is a camera-based fabric inspection system capable of automatic detection of visible deviations in fabrics. With a Profiler™ inspection system, customers achieve a higher and more consistent product quality and optimize both process efficiency and line capacity.

Based on the philosophy that every customer has its own wishes, specifications and budget, Profiler™ has a modular structure. The complete Profiler™-setup is configured based on inspection requirements, as well as the requirements for defect handling and integration and interfacing with other third-party systems.

The development of both our customers and COMVIS is a continuous process. That is why COMVIS thinks it most important that our inspection systems are suitable to grow with the needs of the customer and with the speed of technological developments. Our inspection solutions are scalable, flexible and always customizable. Ready for the demands of tomorrow.

About COMVIS

  • 30 years of proven experience in fabric inspection systems
  • High quality machinery and software produced in the Netherlands
  • World wide remote service, support and maintenance
  • Striving to deliver the best inspection performance possible

PROFILER™ features

  • Inspection speeds up to 100 m/min
  • Suitable for all fabric widths
  • Camera and light technology depending on product specifications
  • Customized integration for retro-fitting or space critical installation
  • Solid-state inspection systems without any moving components

Marking & Synchronization

Every customer produces a unique product with specific material properties. This requires a customer-specific approach when it comes to physically marking defects or placing synchronization marks on the fabric. That is why COMVIS offers various types of solutions, including labeling, UV/IR ink marking as well as digital printing of both defect positions and synchronization marks. Whether or not in combination with a manual, or even fully automatic linear module with edge tracking sensors to cover for a variety of fabric widths running through the inspection system.

Offline inspection systems

Depending on the customer’s production process and quality control process, the position of the inspection system can vary. For instance in the final quality department, running the large rolls from batch to batch. These inspection results are often used in the following process, for instance to cut the rolls into smaller rolls, based on an optimized cut plan or to exclude defects from cut panels on a spreading machine. For customers who do not produce the base fabric, but process the rolls in their own plant, they could perform in incoming roll inspection at the customers warehouse.

Inline inspection systems

Inline systems are integrated directly into or onto the line. For instance coating lines, tenter frames, laminating lines or fabric dyeing lines. As inline inspection systems are often retro-fitted into existing lines, available space can sometimes be an issue for integration. Therefore, COMVIS offers the possibility to engineer a customized Profiler™ inspection system, completely integrated into the machines of the customer.

Industries

  • Medical textiles
  • Technical textiles
  • Automotive textiles
  • Composites
  • Apparel textiles
  • Home textiles

Fabrics

  • Woven fabrics
  • Nonwovens
  • Warp knitted fabrics
  • Knitted fabrics
  • Laminated fabrics
  • Coated fabrics
  • Filter fabrics
  • Sieves and nets

Easy operation via HMI

A PROFILER™ fabric inspection system can be operated in multiple ways. Standard operation goes via the user friendly HMI. Article settings from the Texplorer CORE™ inspection software can be selected from the Article tab on the HMI. Select your article, click on start and the inspection system is ready to go. A watchdog signal releases the line to start the motors.

Furthermore, settings for materials, marking distance and defect clustering can be adjusted. But also language settings and user authorization. Using different user authorization levels, you are able to prevent operators from adjusting higher level settings and leave those privileges to the quality manager. Alarms and counters are displayed on the main screen. For instance, machine state, doors opened, number of defects found and length of inspected fabric.

The second way to operate the PROFILER™ inspection system is via OPC communication. This gives the customer, machine builder or system integrator the possibility to completely operate all features of the PROFILER™ system over their own PLC and/or Human Machine Interface.

Main buttons

  • Start/stop
  • Load article
  • Reset counters

Settings

  • Defect clustering
  • Material settings
  • Stopping distance (optional)
  • Marking device settings
  • Label applicator settings
  • User level authorization

Alarms

  • Door sensors
  • Watch dog signal
  • Signal settings from marking devices

Counters

  • Defect counter
  • Seam counter
  • Applied labels/invisible mark counter
  • Length of inspected fabric

Examples of defects

Profiler™ Inspection Systems use Texplorer™ CORE inspection software. With the use of state the art software algorithms, our software marks all areas which deviate from the normal and known structure of the inspected fabric as a suspected area. Smart parameters then define, whether the deviation in the fabric is an actual defect or if the deviation can be defined as acceptable. This allows us to recognize all types of visible defects. For example, warp defects, weft defects, slub, foreign yarn, drop stitch, holes, stain marks, run, needle lines, dye stain marks, snag picks, thick yarns, missing ends, fine end, knots, broken picks, foreign fibre contamination wrinkles and creases.

Illumination

Profiler™ Backlight
A transmitted light source is used for (semi) translucent fabrics and to automatically find the edges of the fabric and determine width. The Profiler™ Backlight is designed and manufactured by COMVIS for perfect integration in our systems and an outstanding homogeneous illuminated surface.

Profiler™ Front lights
For non-translucent fabrics we use Profiler™ Front lights. It delivers homogeneous light onto the inspection area. COMVIS front lights are engineered in such a way that it illuminates the surface from specific angles. It results in the perfect balance between extracting maximum defect information from the camera images and suppressing natural deviations in the fabric considered as acceptable.

Extraordinary inspection results

Using COMVIS Texplorer™ CORE, the industry’s most powerful and modular vision inspection software for woven, nonwoven, knitted and other (technical) textiles, the PROFILER™ is capable of finding the smallest deviations in your product. For example, all kinds of weaving defects, knots, stains, filamentation or contamination. But you control the sensitivity! If for any reason specific deviations are considered as acceptable, just save your article settings with a more tolerant threshold or use our Texplorer™ CORE Rules Engine to exclude specific deviations from the inspection results.

Feature overview & options

Inspection Feature
Texplorer™ CORE T1 optional
Texplorer™ CORE T2 optional
Texplorer™ CORE T3 ✓
Texplorer™ CORE Edge Anomalies not applicable
Texplorer™ CORE Vision Filaments not applicable
Texplorer™ CORE Horizontal Vertical ✓
Texplorer™ CORE Width Detection ✓
Texplorer™ CORE Edge Detection ✓
Texplorer™ CORE AVG optional
Front-end / Back-end communication
OPC Alive signal ✓
OPC Start/stop inspection ✓
OPC Article loading ✓
OPC User defined fields
(e.g. Roll no., Batch no., etc.)		 ✓
OPC Machine state ✓
WCF optional
File based communication optional
Barcode reader optional
IO-features
Watchdog signal ✓
Alarm tower light (signal state) ✓
Seam detector input ✓
Management features
Texplorer™ DDMS Live Viewer ✓
Texplorer™ DDMS Protocol Editor optional
Texplorer™ DDMS Cutting Table Viewer optional
Machine features
Profiler™ frame + doors + covers + rollers ✓
Frontside inspection ✓
Backside inspection optional
Transmitted illumination ✓
Reflective illumination optional
PLC/HMI ✓
Defect marking / synchro system
Label applicator optional
Invisible ink marker optional
Invisible mark verification optional
Barcode scanner optional
Automated edge tracker optional
Raw inspection results
Session folder with defect images and data
(*.XML + *.TIFF)		 ✓
JSON optional
Normalized inspection results
CSV / SQL optional

We are quality fanatics. What about you?

Ask for more info or a quotation