With the widespread use of print technology and the ability to print on almost any surface, the interest in machine vision systems that inspect the printing quality has also increased in recent years.

Print inspection systems are used in almost all parts of industry (from textiles to printing houses, medical / pharmaceutical companies to the automotive industry).

Basic usage applications:

• Control of printing on paper or metal surfaces
• Control of print on product surface or label such as battery, drug tube, metal box, plastic packaging
• Control of printing by laser marking or ink jet printing, such as expiration date, serial / lot number transfer
• Control of serigraphy on white goods (washing machine/ dishwasher, refrigerator, etc.)
• Controlling the print / pattern transferred or sprayed to textile products such as fabric, carpet
• Comparison of customer sample and assembly sample before printing

Washing machine serigraphy fault detection

With the application of deep learning techniques to print inspection solutions, both teaching the mistakes to system and the identifying the defects has come to a much higher level.

Zoom of print mistakes. Note that even the smallest mistakes can be caught.

In the print inspection, line scan or area scan cameras are used depending on the application needs. Fast printing (usually the printhouse industry) requires the use of line scan cameras. If the finished product is to be inspected as in the above example, an area scan camera can also be used.

Print inspection systems should be set up to check the process performed by the designer before printing, to prevent thousands of prints come wasted because of a minor mistake, or to prevent them from reaching to customers.