A real-time print-defect detection system for web offset printing

This paper presents a detailed description of a vision system developed to detect and locate the non-uniformities that appear on the web offset printing machine. Specifically, the system is capable of monitoring the high-speed web offset printing in a real-time environment and alerting the operator of any events (e.g., structural faults, color variations, missing characters, ink splashes, streaks, etc.) that disrupt the uniformities in the web offset printing. Such events are thought to affect crucial printing properties, resulting in non-uniformities in printing and impacting its quality and printability. This paper describes the vision system in terms of its hardware modules, as well as the image processing algorithms that it utilizes to scan the color images and locate areas of defect from the printing web. Basically, the system utilizes high-speed image scanning algorithms to detect edges and boundaries using linear and non-linear filters of dynamic size, threshold and transformation for further analysis. In addition to being tested in a laboratory environment, a prototype of this system was constructed and deployed to a web printing system, where its performance was evaluated under realistic conditions. The system was installed on a Flexo gravure-print-press machine for testing, and it was found that the vision system was able to successfully monitor and detect non-uniformities.