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| 05/09/2011 | 589.58 kB |
Each of natural stone slab has unique characteristics that differentiate it from others by its tone, grain, blemishes, cracks, etc. Among other physical characteristics, perhaps this "unpredictability" to the surface is one of the main factors that differentiates marble, granite and other natural stones from other stones that are used for lining artificial surfaces.
This feature creates many problems for the process control and quality control in the natural stone industry. Even the sales processes are affected, since it is very difficult to standardize or group the quality of the marble or granite slabs, even for slabs from the same block of natural stone.
Traditionally, to select the materials, the customers are visiting the manufacturer's warehouses in person, or the same manufacturer is sending or posting some poor quality pictures on the web. Because of these procedures, customers can only inspect the appearance of the first slab of the bundle they are going to buy, and they are not being able to verify all the pieces, slab by slab. These methods do not provide solutions to the high number of complaints received in the companies of the stone industry for lack of conformity of the materials.
Traditional photography of stone slabs
Applied to the natural stone industry, many factors are affecting the sharpness, quality and realism of the pictures taken with conventional cameras: light reflections, human operator´s inexperience handling the camera, lighting variations due to different storage spaces, time of day when the picture is taken, etc. So, several photographs of the same slab, taken under different conditions, produce very different images with very different sharpness, quality and realism.
IDStone Capture: pictures slab by slab, real time
IDStone SGA incorporates an advanced system for image capturing in real time, transcending the limitations of conventional photography: IDStone Capture. IDStone´s exclusive image capture technology allows, at the end of the productive process, to take pictures slab by slab and to integrate each image, unequivocally, with their corresponding registry of stock, facilitating, at the same time, information queries, real time, from any other module of IDStone (IDStone Office, B2B). Based on the last computer vision technology, the procedures of IDStone Capture have been adapted to meet the needs of the industry producing marble slabs tables or granite slabs mainly, although its use can be extended to other kind of products.
A turnkey solution
The launching, the implementation of IDStone Capture is conceived as a turnkey solution that incorporates the following elements:
- IDStone Capture (software).
- Computer vision system.
- Lighting (self development).
- Electronic control elements for the production line and other parts.
- Design of enclosure.
- Thermal Solution.
- Anti-dust solution.
- Operator interface.
- Maintenance.
Main features of IDStone Capture
- Image capturing of slabs or tiles.
- Usage profiles by material or by sets of materials.
- Capture of piece identifiers (barcode labels, RFID tags).
- Association of each image to the corresponding register of stock (per slab, slab package or block).
- Association of attributes (quality, measurements, etc.).
- Manual measurement on images.
- Water marks (identifier, company, etc.).
- Different algorithms for automated processing of the captured images.
- User interface developed specifically for touchscreen terminals.
- Direct communication, real time with IDStone Server.
Related modules
IDStone B2B: It´s time to offer more value to your customers. IDStone B2B projects a smarter, more professional image for your company, differentiates you from competitors. With IDStone B2B your customers will become more loyal and your company will gain a better market position.
IDStone Reader: Provides the automatic identification of the image (in association with a stock register), by decoding the bar code built on the natural stone slab from the main image or secondary image cameras that can be achieved complementary.
IDStone Quality: From the pictures of the slabs captured by IDStone Capture, this module allows the manual sorting of tables by a qualified operator from the office. It also allows the measurement of the useful area (trade measure), being this method faster, accurate and effective than the traditional classification or measure processes in the plant.
IDStone Server: It is the engine, the “core” of IDStone SGA. It’s the environment for storing, orderly, large amounts of information and manages the communications with the other system modules.
IDStone Office: It is the easy to use user interface to access and to manage the information that the system stores. Its advanced data presentation technology allows the users to group, filter by any column or customize your views.