The system performs real-time inspection ranging from 1,500 pieces to 10,000 pieces per hour depending on production requirements. This inspection is performed immediately after blowing or during packaging. Depending of the performance needed the system is equipped with one, two or three 400 MHz Pentium processors. Furthermore the entire production process is now under continuous control thus avoiding the rejection of whole batches. Automatic quality grading of marble, granite and other stone Quality control in the grading of marble, granite and other building stone is very labour intensive, tedious and hard.
Operators work in dusty and humid environments.
People can only work for short periods before they need a break. This is a challenging application for automatic quality control systems due to the large variety of different types of stones and strict limits on the acceptable variations of colour and pattern. MASC clusters slabs or tiles according to aesthetic properties into homogeneous piles. This automatic identification is based on the capture by a computer of the skills of experts. The industrial benefits of MASC are faster, cheaper and better grading of stone slabs and tiles, increased line capacity, more consistent quality and savings in materials and production costs.