42 n MACHINE VISION April 2025 www.drivesncontrols.com Floor-maker uses AI vision system to spot adhesive errors The Austrian company Scheucher Holzindustrie manufactures parquet oors in a process that combines tradition with one of the most modern factories of its type in Europe. Not all parquet oors are the same. As well as solid variants, multi-layer versions is particularly popular, consisting of several layers including a core layer and a wear layer The choice of wood in uences the stability and appearance of the parquet. Scheucher uses spruce or pine as the backing. A major advantage of "pre nished parquet" is its ease of installation. Many types can be laid as a oating oor, without needing to be glued down. Even inexperienced people can install their own wooden oors. The planks simply click into each other, saving time and reducing the workload. The click system needs to be milled precisely so that the panels interlock stably. Incorrect milling can lead to problems during installation and subsequent instability. The same applies to the adhesive bond between the core and wear layers. The adhesive must be applied evenly to ensure complete coverage and a uniform bond between the layers. Air inclusions or irregular application can result in cavities and impair the oor’s durability. Scheucher could have inspected the glued joints of its multilayer parquets using classic, rule-based image-processing. However, it wanted a more intelligent approach. It has therefore adopted a system that that combines image processing with AI, allowing the oors to be checked for defects, deviations and quality problems, thus reducing errors and increasing productivity. The glued parquet planks are illuminated using UV light. The adhesive uoresces and any residues become visible. A pair of IDS NXT rio cameras with embedded neural networks detect the uorescing joints and process the image data “on the edge”, before passing it on to a downstream process. The embedded vision technology avoids the need for a host PC and reduces energy consumption and system costs. The OPC UA protocol enables direct communication with machines and control systems. “In the pro ling for our Multi or parquet oors, a special click pro le is milled into the planks. During this process, two intelligent IDS NXT cameras are used to check the presence of adhesive in the adhesive joint between the core and the backing layer,” explains Dipl-Ing Klaus Bauer of Scheucher’s r&d department. The application was developed and integrated into the parquet manufacturer’s production system using IDS’NXT rio Experience Kit. The contains all of the components needed to create, train and execute a neural network. “Until now, we had not used any image processing – either rule-based or intelligent – for the quality control of our bonded joints,” Bauer summarises. “Nevertheless, it was our goal to solve this requirement using AI. As we are looking for errors that only occur extremely rarely, our challenge was to nd a sucient number of ‘bad partial images’to train the neural network. And we succeeded. “In the end, we needed around 60 good and bad part samples before the AI learned to recognise the threshold between OK and Not OK,”he continues. Faulty panels can now be detected and reworked reliably. The system prevents planks with bonding defects from being delivered to customers. “This makes us one of the few manufacturers on the market to achieve a 100% inspection in this regard – it takes less than 90ms to check a oorboard.” Scheucher is planning further applications. “The task was a good introduction to AIsupported image-processing for us, especially because the learning curve was quick,”Bauer reports. "This paves the way for further applications and future-proof, ecient production.” n An Austrian manufacturer of parquet ooring has adopted an AI-based vision system to identify insucient or excessive use of the adhesives that hold the oor’s layers together. A camera views the edge of the parquet ooring to spot faulty glue joints between the layers Parquet oors are made by gluing several layers together. Scheucher’s vision system spots if too much or tool little glue has been applied.
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