OPET – Thermal Camera-Based Bottle Cap Seal Inspection System

OPET ensures sealing by heat-sealing bottle caps on the lubricants production line. However, temperature variations during this sealing process made it difficult to determine whether caps were properly sealed. Having operators perform these inspections manually was time-consuming and increased the risk of faulty products slipping into shipment. To eliminate this quality issue and add a real-time inspection point to the production line, we developed a control system with thermal image processing infrastructure together with OPET.

Our team developed a thermal camera-supported system that analyzes the temperature distribution of bottle caps after sealing.

Building blocks of the system we developed:

• A thermal camera integrated into the production line captured the post-sealing temperature image
• Image processing algorithms developed in Python separated properly sealed caps from problematic ones
• The sealing temperature pattern was analyzed to perform a pass/fail evaluation for each product
• A .NET-based user interface provided operators with instant notifications and access to historical data

What Did We Solve?

• Eliminated the need for human visual inspection of the cap sealing process
• Enabled detection of incorrectly sealed products during production
• Products with leakage risk were removed before shipment
• Quality control became automatic, traceable and measurable

Results Achieved

• Complaints and returns due to faulty sealing decreased noticeably
• Operator dependency and manual inspection time were eliminated
• Quality control data became digitally archivable
• Production quality and customer confidence were strengthened