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COVAL Joins MASEAS As Newest Partner

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 18:29:32 GMT

MASEAS is proud to announce that COVAL joins us as our newest partner! COVAL brings a comprehensive suite of vacuum technology to the table built around quality and innovation.

Don Davis, CEO of MASEAS says: "We look forward to our partnership with the COVAL team. Together with our like-minded culture with a focus on trust, we will bring innovative vacuum technology to our broad customer base throughout the northeast."

About COVAL

For over 30 years, COVAL has been developing its culture with particular focus on innovation, quality, and service within the vacuum technology industry. Their teams are heavily specialized - broken down by industries such as food & beverage, aerospace, packaging, and more to guarantee their product is always a "best fit" for the customer's specific application.

Using Automated Machine Vision in Food & Beverage Manufacturing

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 19:58:05 GMT

Today, costly food recalls, foodborne illness outbreaks, and compliance with new regulatory requirements are a few factors driving innovation in the food and beverage industry. You can also add the never-ending need for greater productivity, lower operating costs, and rising consumer expectations to the list of reasons food and beverage manufacturers are searching for new approaches that improve food safety and deliver greater speed, efficiency and quality control.

The innovative technologies food and beverage manufacturers are adopting include fixed industrial scanners and machine vision cameras. These Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) technologies have emerged as critical tools in every manufacturing process, enabling automated track-and-trace and quality inspection workflows throughout production to ensure only the highest quality products reach consumers.

Historically, when people think of machine vision technologies, they tend to assume the systems are hyper-complex and require advanced technical capabilities to deploy and operate. Only part of that presumption is accurate, however. While machine vision tools are highly innovative and often use complex machine learning systems, real-world applications are accessible to just about any manufacturer.

As an analogy, consider the imaging capabilities of any halfway-decent smartphone: The mobile device you probably have in your pocket right now includes a wide range of advanced image processing capabilities that would have required workstation-level image processing tools and the skills of a trained professional photographer not long ago. Today, you capture those images with no thought at all.

The latest fixed scanning and machine vision tools aren’t quite as accessible, but they’re close. In fact, Zebra Technologies offers a portfolio of fixed scanners and smart cameras that run on a simple, easy-to-master software platform (Zebra Aurora) that allows anyone to quickly create and deploy powerful data- and image-capture solutions for manufacturing applications.

So, while many food production plants still rely on error-prone, time-consuming manual data collection and inspection processes, there is an easy path to automation systems that support the fastest food and beverage production lines.

Here’s a brief look at several typical workflows:

Vision systems inspect food packages, including seals and tamper-evident bands throughout processing to ensure packaging consistency and safeguard product quality.

Machine vision cameras use deep learning OCR technology to scan and decode batch data, enabling detailed track-and-trace applications. They can also read, confirm, and verify “Best By Dates” and product expiration dates even when the printing is less than perfect.

Scanning and vision technologies check fill levels and cap properties in bottling applications to ensure product quality.

Machine vision systems automatically evaluate label placement and detect labeling defects.

Fixed scanners capture inventory data, lot codes and batch codes with great accuracy to enable better inventory management and production tracking.

Machine vision systems can be trained to recognize foreign material contamination as food and beverage products move through production.

These are just a few examples of how food and beverage manufacturers use Zebra’s easy-to-deploy fixed scanning and machine vision tools to automate their operations. Fortunately, with Zebra’s automation portfolio, you don’t need to tackle all of them at once. You can start with tools that allow you to automate simple 1D or 2D barcode scanning, then scale your system with simple software upgrades as your needs and goals evolve—without needing to invest in new hardware.

About Zebra Technologies

At Zebra, they're committed to empowering teams with the mobility and insight to deliver at the cutting edge of excellence. More than just providing intelligent hardware, they offer solutions that give organizations complete visibility to make smart, nimble decisions about what action to take now, and how to plan for tomorrow.

Apera AI Joins MASEAS As Newest Partner

Mon, 15 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT

MASEAS is proud to announce that Apera AI joins us as our newest partner! Apera AI brings an impressive 4D vision technology to the table built around AI and machine learning that control robotic pose estimation and path planning as well as object recognition.

4D Vision Technology

4D Vision is run through robotic workcells using Apera Vue vision software. Vue is robot-agnostic and compatible with many of the leading robot brands. Apera Vue is suitable for bin picking, assembly, packaging and sorting applications.

The difference in performance versus existing vision systems is measurable in a lower total vision cycle time as low as 0.3 seconds (3 Hz). This performance metric includes the ability to handle objects with shapes and finishes previously considered “impossible,” such as clear, shiny or highly similar objects. These operations occur under ambient light and without the significant investment in cameras, lighting, sensors and fixtures needed by other systems.

To learn more about how Apera AI's technology can benefit your application process, please reach out to your local MASEAS salesperson or one of our offices in New York or New England.

About Apera AI

Apera AI's goal is to make factories more productive by providing robots with human-like vision intelligence and speed. Their technology can be applied in applications such as bin picking, packaging, assembly, kitting, and sorting within multiple industries.

Asyril Joins MASEAS Lineup As Newest Partner

Thu, 26 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Minuteman | Empire Automation Systems is excited to announce that we have partnered with Asyril in an effort to bring part feeding solutions to our customers.

Asyril has developed flexible feeding solutions based on 3-axis vibration technology and vision-based smart control that can sort parts and components from <0.1 to 150 mm in size. This process allows parts to be moved in all directions, eliminates the accumulation of parts in a corner or on an edge, eliminates the recirculation of parts as well as handling delicate parts smoothly thanks to the precise adjustment of the frequency and amplitude.

3-Axis Vibration Technology

The 3-axis vibration technology offers unprecedented optimization of the feeding and sorting process. This process allows parts to be moved in all directions, eliminates the accumulation of parts in a corner or on an edge, eliminates the recirculation of parts as well as handling delicate parts smoothly thanks to the precise adjustment of the frequency and amplitude.

About Asyril

Asyril's field of expertise and their know-how in vibration technology, vision, artificial intelligence and robotics allow them to develop adapted and scalable solutions.

Asyril designs patented and innovative devices for the automated assembly of all types of products. In this perspective, their Asycube series allows a perfect distribution of all types of parts, including parts with complex geometries or very delicate parts.

The feeding, orientation and sorting of bulk components are key elements in the process of automated assembly. This particularly complex process requires machine designers to call upon specialized partners who can offer adapted, innovative and integrable solutions. Asyril stands out for its innovation capacity and operational excellence. Their products are of the highest quality and environmentally friendly. They develop simple, efficient and easy-to-integrate solutions, with the aim of enabling our customers to optimize their lead times, reduce their costs and thus gain in competitiveness.

MASEAS Partners with Zebra Technologies to Expand Vision Capabilities

Thu, 19 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Minuteman | Empire Automation Systems is excited to announce that we have partnered with Zebra Technologies!

Machine Vision & Fixed Scanning

Zebra delivers the widest available ecosystem of machine vision products and fixed industrial scanners. Scale up and across portfolios with ease by adding on complimentary hardware or a software license. Their flexible machine vision portfolio grows with your business, so you can effortlessly leverage vision technology to boost yields, lower costs, and enhance regulatory compliance.

Modular machine vision and fixed scanning components let you right-fit your solution—and growth. Their intuitive Aurora software is easier to use and their systems require less hardware to implement. Adapting an existing automation system? Their portfolio interoperates widely with third-party components so you can drive down time to install, acquire and deploy your vision.

Further expanding their portfolio, Zebra acquired Matrox Imaging in 2022. Matrox brings more cameras, frame grabbers, vision controllers, I/O cards and 3D sensors to the table.

To learn more about how Zebra's technology can benefit your application needs, please reach out to your local MASEAS salesperson or one of office in New York or New England.