The roadshow truck from MULTIVAC Marking & Inspection is back on the road. As with previous years, customers in Germany and other European countries can learn all about MULTIVAC's innovative labelling and inspection solutions at their own door. This time the focus is on visual pack, label and print inspection in the food industry. 

Rising demands in food labelling increase the complexity of information that has to be printed on labels. As the throughput of packaging lines continues to increase, it is therefore no longer possible for the human eye to inspect label print thoroughly.

Although present legislation does not yet stipulate the use of visual inspection systems for checking labels and print, the investment in automatic inspection systems can however be very beneficial for many reasons. These systems make it possible to achieve higher output capacity with reduced personnel, and they can improve cost-effectiveness and use of resources.

Other relevant factors are the prevention of product recalls due to incorrect labelling with all the associated costs and brand damage, as well as ensuring that a consistently high pack quality is maintained, which makes a major contribution at the point of sale to differentiating products from the competition and thereby increasing sales.

Automatic camera inspection will be demonstrated in MULTIVAC's truck with the company's I 410 vision system. This inspection solution, which is independent of the packaging machine and labelling or marking system, is installed on a separate transport conveyor, and it is ideal for retrofitting to existing thermoforming packaging lines. 

It can also however be added to one- or two-track traysealer lines. The vision system is controlled via the user-friendly MULTIVAC HMI. As an alternative, the camera inspection systems can also be integrated into a thermoforming packaging machines or labelling system, and operated via their HMI user interface. They ensure that, even at high process speeds, every individual pack is reliably inspected against a wide range of features according to the particular demands of the product and pack. Inspection is performed by a line scanner from above and below.

 One of the most common inspection tasks is checking whether the correct labels have been applied to the pack and whether it is precisely positioned. Or whether the product code, use-by date and batch number are correct and legible.

The roadshow truck also includes some test apparatus, which is used to give a visual presentation of the opportunities for quality control with MULTIVAC's luminescence and color sensors as well as area scan cameras. This means comprehensive advice about the capabilities of the individual modules, which can be used for visual inspection.