Twenty years ago, detecting bird swings anywhere on a glass container was considered difficult. No system on the market could find all of the defects reliably. Glassmakers lived with this and managed the risks knowing that the automated inspection equipment installed on their lines could not get all of the defects. Today, if a machine cannot find all bird swings, it’s out.

In the first article of this series, published in issue 4/2021 of Glass Mchinery Plants & Accessories, Niki Estner, Software Development Manager
at Bucher Emhart Glass, described how Emhart Glass Vision started using artificial intelligence (AI) for visual glass inspection in 2017. Since its original introduction, several additional AI based inspection solutions have been added to the already powerful inspection portfolio. 

It is clear that digitisation is the future of glass forming. But what will it look like, and how will we get there? Bucher Emhart Glass explains.

How do you ensure support, instruction and a timely start of operations when you are not allowed on the customer’s premises? This was the challenge the Mexican project team of Bucher Emhart and our customer Fevisa faced in the spring of 2020.

Artificial intelligence’, ‘Deep learning’ and ‘Neural networks’ are just some of the expressions we are learning about day by day, and which will soon be taking us all to the next level as we learn how to harness the power and apply it into new inspection technologies. 

Downstream ware handling performance is directly proportional to the placement of containers transferred onto the conveyor. Jarmo Kammonen explains how Bucher Emhart Glass has honed the pusher motion of its ware handling products.