Table of Contents
Origin of X-ray
Benefits of X-ray Required
Capabilities Detectable
Contaminants
False Rejects
Radiation Safety
Why use X-ray Inspection?
Best Practice
Conclusion
Origin of X-ray
In 1895, physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen noticed a strange glow: rays of light, coming from a chemically-coated screen that had been hit with a high-voltage charge.
He coined these rays “X-rays”, due to their mysterious nature. This discovery would prove to be one of the most significant scientific advancements to date.
By making the invisible visible, Röntgen created a means for a variety of fields to improve the scientific process and to ultimately improve the human experience.
The same principles observed by Röntgen are critical elements in our modern life, including airport security, medicine, and food and beverage safety.
Today, computers can automatically evaluate X-ray images. Technology is dramatically improving with recent advancements in artificial intelligence (A.I.).
Furthermore, X-ray images provide objective evidence that a product was properly inspected.
Benefits of X-ray
X-ray inspection is an essential element of modern quality control.
For any industry, quality control is crucial to:
- Increase productivity (OEE)
- Garner trust between brand and consumer
- Improve accuracy of product contents
- Minimize waste and cost
Despite robust manufacturing maintenance programs, increases in autonomous operation combined with unanticipated equipment malfunctions or failures can lead to undetected contamination. In the food and beverage industry, foreign objects – like stone, glass, or metal fragments – can make their way into the product during processing. This creates risks to consumers’ health and is costly to companies.
To ensure that products are free of defects, X-ray inspection has become the foundation of quality control.
Benefits of X-ray inspection extend beyond finding contaminants to provide increased accuracy in other quality metrics. Fill level measurements; seal inspection; mass and weight determination; label presence, container deformities – these can all be measured to extremely accurate degrees using a single system – reducing risk, complexity and cost.
Required Capabilities
The functionality of X-ray machines varies by manufacturer. When comparing different X-ray machines side by side, evaluate the full range of the machines’ functionality – both breadth and of inspections offered and accuracy of measurment. A high performing machine should be able to deliver all required inspection measures of full containers, at line speeds. Inspection systems should be able to deliver more value than simply identifying contaminents – they should be able to deliver additional benefits such as:
- Fill level of containers with variations as small as 1.0 milliliter. Peco InspX can detect fill height to approximately 1/16″
- Missing cap or crown detection
- Finding empty glass container defects such as bird swings, inclusions, shards and more
- Whole container image archiving (A method of saving every container image as objective proof of proper inspection)
- Verifying product contents to detect missing objects or components
Detectable Contaminants
A good rule of thumb for remembering what materials are X-ray detectable: materials that float in a glass of water are generally not X-ray detectable; however, materials that sink generally are detectable. There are some exceptions to this rule and thus it is important to perform an application test on your specific product and package to determine what can be detected considering the characteristics of the container and the product therein. There are a range of types of contaminants (foreign materials) that X-ray inspection can detect in food and beverage products:
- Metal Fragments: shavings, wire, vent tubes, needles, buck shot
- Glass Defects: shards, container defects, bird swings
- Animal Parts: beef, chicken, pork, tuna and turkey bones, as well as frogs and mice
- Stones: rubble, stone fragments
- Other Materials: hard plastics, Viton, rubber, silicone
False Rejects
The efficacy of any inspection process must be measured by the success of what the process can detect and the projected “false reject” rate of containers that should not have been rejected. An inspection system that can find 100% of what you are looking for each time is of little use if the false reject rate is 1 out of every 10 inspected packages.
Identifying and eliminating false rejects relies on the quality of the imaging process and the sophistication of the inspection software. The best images are produced using what engineers call a “high signal-to-noise ratio”, which allows features of the image to be easily distinguished. Achieving a high signal-to-noise ratio requires a powerful X-ray tube that can operate at high current levels. The signal-to-noise ratio can also be enhanced by moving the X-ray tube closer to the detector.
Inspection software plays a critical role in interpreting the X-ray image – the software must be capable of reliably differentiating contaminants from the product. X-ray vendors adopt a variety of highly tailored computation approaches to identify foreign material – it is critical that the approach selected for your inspection is optimized for the product and package being inspected.
Radiation Safety
While radiation provides many reliable advantages, it is natural that safety is of concern. Fortunately, users of food X-ray inspection systems can be reassured that these systems operate at very low power compared to other X-ray machines (e.g., airport security and medical imaging), and their enclosure design does not allow any harmful radiation to escape.
The automated X-ray inspection systems used in food and beverage applications are called “Closed Cabinet X-ray Systems”. The term “Closed Cabinet” is a regulatory designation that refers to the design characteristics of these systems to prevent emission of any radiation. Regulations governing radiation emissions from Closed Cabinet systems is determined by the country where the unit is operated.
Peco InspX recommends that customers have their X-ray inspection equipment certified at least annually to ensure that all safety features are in good working order and that the equipment is fully capable of meeting the assigned inspection specifications.
Why Use X-ray Inspection
There are a host of reasons for food, beverage and life science product manufacturers to use X-ray inspection technology. A particularly compelling reason to embrace X-ray inspection technology is that it provides the most comprehensive quality control tool available today. X-ray systems:
- Protect against the widest range of foreign material contaminants;
- Are the only inspection tool on the market that can provide proof that the product was correctly inspected using a repository of saved images that contain specific inspection parameters.
When compared to other technologies in the market today such – as metal detection or vision systems – X-ray outperforms as measured by breadth, accuracy and auditability of the quality inspection.
No other popular inspection approach delivers a comparable degree of objective evidence of inspection and traceability from package to inspection result.
Best Practices
When deciding to invest in X-ray inspection technology, the solution you choose should reflect a collaborative understanding of the particulars of your inspection landscape – product, package, speed, environmental conditions, inspection location and more. The Best practices for evaluating X-ray inspection providers for food and beverage include:
HAVE THE RIGHT PARTNERSHIP
Partner with an experienced company that has extensive knowledge in your specific field of X-ray applications. Should any questions or complications arise, your partner will be able to quickly and confidently provide a solution.
X-ray machines must comply with local regulation. The company you choose to partner with should be knowledgeable of the requirements of local ordinances.
LEVERAGE THE RIGHT SOFTWARE
It is as important – if not more important – to consider the software component of your X-ray technology investment as it is the hardware. Capturing a high-quality image is the first step for an accurate inspection – the next is to analyze that image quickly and methodically to differentiate the expected from the unexpected.
Proper inspection software and algorithms are crucial to reducing “false rejects” and interpreting X-ray images. The right software should accurately differentiate contaminants from the product and should evaluate the entire contents of the container without masking. As a user, you should have capabilities to recall images, compare across images and measure images.
LEVERAGE CUSTOMER SERVICE FOR REAL-TIME IMPROVEMENTS
Choose a company that takes customer service seriously and has the technical infrastructure and expertise to deploy software enhancements remotely. Partnering with a company capable of remote software administration is a strategic differentiator to ensure your equipment is always up to date; avoiding waits for a technician to travel to and make repairs or updates on site.
LEARN AND IMPROVE FROM YOUR DATA
Your chosen partner should offer detailed inspection data analysis. The ability to properly analyze inspection data provides the opportunity to optimize your manufacturing processes and ensures you are realizing the most benefit from your X-ray machine’s software and hardware. Proper analysis of inspection data will result in greater manufacturing efficiency and higher profits.
CONDUCT ALL INSPECTION MEASURES
Not all X-ray machines are created equal. When investing in X-ray technologies, ensure that the hardware of your machines is produced by a quality source, and that wear parts are affordable and repairs are n ot overly complicated. A conversation with your potential X-ray technology partner will reveal their confidence in the hardware or lack thereof.
USE THE BEST EQUIPMENT
When comparing capabilities, be sure to evaluate the breadth in types of measurments the system can deliver. Inspection machines should be able to deliver all inspection measures – make sure to compare machine abilities before making a purchase, since they vary by manufacturer. Inspection machines should be able to identify contaminents; detect fill levels and missing caps or crowns; glass defects and container image archiving.
Conclusion
From Röntgen’s laboratory in 1895 to today’s wide-scale usage, “X-rays” have become an essential component of the food manufacturing industry. While this article does not cover everything there is to know about X-ray inspection, there is enough information to develop an understanding of the important place it has in the food and beverage industry. In fact, the X-ray inspection industry for food and beverage is growing over 100% year over year.
About Peco Inspx
Peco InspX is a leading provider of inspection systems for the food, beverage, and pharmaceutical industries. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, we combine cutting edge technology with rugged construction to produce high performance, reliable inspection equipment. From X-ray inspection to fill level detection, Peco InspX equipment addresses a broad range of inspection applications.
If you are interested in a demo of how Peco InspX can help your X-ray inspection process, please email us at info@peco-inspx.com or call 800-732-6286.
