| Inspiration |
Having worked in the
print media with corporations
like Bennett, Coleman
and Company Limited,
Observer India Limited
– A group company
of the Reliance Industries
Limited and Lok Prakashan
Limited, the requirements
and pain points were
known and so were the
challenges faced by
the end users’.
It was evident that
there was a void which
needed to be addressed
from the end user’s
point of view.
This was the right opportunity
for him to put together
a team with past experience
in print media to study,
research, conceptualize,
architect, develop and
bench test a color registration
system. And while doing
so care was taken to
keep the costs to an
affordable level.
Raj (Rajendra S Parmar)
then founded Emerging
Technology.
Emerging Technology
developed a system,
accuVISION™, which
addressed the requirements
of the industry. The
understanding of the
industry benchmarks
and prevailing market
scenario helped tremendously
in reinventing the system
and while doing so incorporated
new features to attain
enviable position.
The advantage of in-depth
relevant knowledge,
qualification and multi-disciplinary
expertise has perpetrated
Emerging Technology’s
accuVISION™ to
make early inroads in
the industry.
Close on the heels of
accuVISION™, Emerging
Technology developed
On-Line GSM monitoring
system - accuMEASURE™,
a first of its kind
product in the industry.
As we are all aware
GSM variations cost
a dear to printers /
publishers. Till this
development is installed,
all the newsprint users
have to take the sample
to a laboratory and
validate the GSM, though
an On-Line-GSM measurement
is the need of the industry.
The system is under
beta testing and once
through, will be installed
at one of the largest
newspaper houses in
the country.
Emerging Technology
diversified into Telecom
using the same technology
of embedded system,
Re-usable objects and
real time system. With
the cellular telecom
managing thousands of
sites while monitoring
Diesel level, Battery
State-of-Health, Alarms,
Power management and
other parameters. We
thought it was the right
time to enter the market
through our offering
of GPRS based data capture
and offering them through
web enabled technologies.
The product is GPRS
based Monitoring System. |
| accuVISION™
45 |
The
accuVISION™ is a Windows based
color registration system, which is
developed after studying the market
trends and customer needs. The system
feature enables reducing operating
costs & print wastage and responds
quickly to the desired corrections.
The high resolution digital camera
grabs the image of the printing marks
and lends itself for image processing.
The camera image being of very high
resolution is divided into multiple
zones so that the processing time
may be reduced to a minimum. The software
adapts itself immediately to the area
of interest. The software has inbuilt
algorithms to clean the image for
all speeds.
If the printing house is contemplating
moving towards digital automation,
the accuVISION™ will pave the
way forward and coordinate data exchange
that may be required at any time.
The entire system comprises of a high-powered
windows PC with clock speed in excess
of 3 GHz. For presses with more than
two webs it employs a PCI expander
to reduce the data transfer load on
the CPU bus.
The PC is preloaded with a digital
I/O (Input / Output) card to interface
with the PLC. The PLC drives the position
controlling motors of printing machine.
The CCD color camera with more than
1000 dots resolution provides the
desired accuracy.
These cameras are triggered by a common
signal to grab the image simultaneously.
This trigger signal is derived from
the electronics which senses the paper
position.
|
| Highlights |
| •
Windows based central computer |
| •
Friendly & Informative front end |
| •
High-resolution camera; Lending overall
high scanning accuracy |
| •
Automatic Mark cognition and correction |
| •
Accurate Color registration, Displacement
Detection & Correction |
| •
Machine Speed in excess of 90,000 CPH |
| •
Up to 20 printing towers per control
unit |
| •
Automatic Calibration |
| accuVISION™
Schematic Diagram |
 |
| accuVISION™
– User Interface |
 |
| Feature
set |
| The
Front End Terminal The front-end terminal
is a very user-friendly interface giving
complete visual presentation of the
happenings at the printing machine.
It displays the color offset and the
correction in progress giving the X-Y
coordinates of offset at every unit.
A sample of the friendly user interface
will look as follows. |
Finer
position control A digital
encoder is deployed to provide very
fine control over the length of the
newspaper. This gives the printer a
freedom to choose the mark position.
The encoder can be tuned to an accuracy
of 1 mm over the paper length.
Synchronization
The cameras are triggered to capture
the image grab as soon as the marks
appear in front of the camera. This
trigger is simultaneously applied to
all the web units. The synchronization
eliminates unnecessary grabs and hence
the algorithmic efficiency. The trigger
algorithm is build using a proxy sensor
and a TTL circuit.
Mark
Search The philosophy to search
the mark is very innovative. The algorithm
identifies the color marks and cleans
up the image of any smudge that may
be present. Having acquired the image
it finds out the boundary of the mark
and computes the distances between the
images in both the directions. The software
has a never before algorithm to detect
a slant in the image of a given color.
This is a case when x-y correction will
fail to register the images.
Quick Registration
The camera captures the images continuously
irrespective of the printing. These
images are stored in a pre-designated
directory for the software to pick up
the image and process it sequentially.
Once the desired correction is computed,
the motors are actuated appropriately
depending on the correction required.
Subsequent image grabbing will happen
only after the correction is ensured.
This would depend on the web length
of the farthest web unit from the camera
position.
Manual over
ride It may be necessary to
manually over ride the auto color registration
system. This may be required in case
one of the color marks is missing or
there is a catastrophic failure which
could be a printing machine or the color
registration system by itself.
Cut off control (Optional)
Having achieved the registration, the
digital encoder helps in understanding
the start of the printing. It helps
in ensuring the print area in the center
of the page. For cut-off control, all
the black plates have a horizontal mark
on the page which is sensed through
an optoelectronic sensor with fiber
optic cables.
|
| The
Hardware |
| The
Camera The camera (Sony or equivalent)
is a C-mounted color digital camera
using IEEE1394-1995 digital interface.
The transfer speed is 800 Mbps and supports
higher frames. |
 |
The
camera has external trigger, which is
synchronized by using a signal from
the proxy sensor generated from the
folder. This allows exact coordination
with external world.
The exposure time is software controlled
and the camera can go as low a, 2 microsecond
from a starting point of 850. The faster
shutter speed emulates stroboscopic
effect at high speed and a near still
image is grabbed at machine speeds of
100,000 impressions per hour.
The camera offers several “Image
area of interest” which can be
exploited to minimize computing time
to advantage. The screen area is divided
into different zones and the application
can now concentrate on the area where
registration marks are concentrated
are considered. This reduces a lot of
computing over heads.
|
| Salient
features are: |
| Image sensor |
1/2-type progressive
scan |
| Number of effective
pixels |
Approx. 800K pixels
1,034 (H) ´ 779 (V) |
| Output image size
(Max.) |
1,024 (H) ´
768 (V) |
| nterface format |
IEEE1394-1995 |
| Frame rate |
15 or 30 FPS |
| Transfer speed |
400 Mbps |
| HUE / Saturation
/ Brightness |
Adjustable |
| External
trigger shutter |
50
micro-second |
Programmable
Logic Controller (PLC) The PLC drives
the position motors in lateral or longitudinal
direction depending on the correction
required. Every unit will have two motors
for lateral and longitudinal movement
each. Each of these motors will have
two direction control signals also.
Meaning, every single color unit will
need four motor drive contacts.
In order to bring modularity 1 PLC is
deployed for every unit. The PLC is
configured to with 40 digital O/P and
16 Analog I/P.
|
 |
