Candle Inspection System

This series of automated inspection systems was developed and programmed for inline inspections of standard 3-wick candles.

The systems were installed on the line conveyor after the cooling conveyor and before the labeling machine for all 8 lines of a candle manufacturing facility. A candle would come into the machine once every 3 seconds where it would then be grabbed by a star-wheel cog mechanism that introduced it to a rotating drive wheel. This rotating drive wheel would rotate the candle in place inspecting the outside of the glass for wax drip defects while a top camera inspected the position of the wicks relative to one another and the glass. Good candles would be shuttled back onto the line conveyor to head into the labeling machine while bad candles would be forced out of the system onto a rework conveyor.

The system utilized a Keyence controller with a pair of Keyence high resolution 2MP vision cameras. A PLC and a color touch screen HMI were used to control this machine and display run data along with a top mounted marquee for upstream operator notifications. All electrical components were housed inside a Nema-12 enclosure on the front of the system. A Misumi conveyor was used for the reject conveyor, while the customer supplied all internal drive components including the line conveyor, star-wheel, and drive wheel to keep consistent with other inline equipment.