The quality control process in the pharmaceutical industry includes not only the control of the target product (e.g. tablets, capsules), but also the control of the packaging. Manufacturing defects in packaging can directly affect the properties of the drug product, which is why thorough quality control is so important. Over the past few years, we have implemented several vision inspection stations for the inspection of white HDPE plastic bottles at one of the leading plastic manufacturers. Visual inspection area:
 

• black spots (burn marks, inclusions) white spots (impurities, inclusions)

• bottle contour (dents, deformations, etc.)

• flash (e.g. on the neck)

• bottle seal

• neck shape

 

The vision system is integrated into the production line and has an automatic ejection process for defective parts. The system's capacity is 10 bottles per second, with a minimum defect size of 0.5 mm.