ORAFOL Halves Lens Inspection Time After Switching to AI Vision

ORAFOL Fresnel Optics has cut its optical inspection time in half by replacing manual checks with an AI-based vision system. The German company has put more than 1.5 million components through the new setup.

Inspection had been a stubborn problem. Some of ORAFOL’s plastic Fresnel lenses measure just 4 mm, and their fine surface microstructures make scratches and other flaws hard to spot. Operators used to check each lens by eye under controlled lighting, and the job took as many as 15 people.

The company now uses deep-learning vision software. It checks every part against set specifications and rejects anything outside tolerance. The key was the imaging. Standard cameras alone could not do the job, so ORAFOL combined them with cameras built to reproduce the structure of a Fresnel lens. That let the system pick up defects that conventional inspection had missed. Integrator ID Engineering helped develop the second version of the system.

In a setup like thisInspection can potentially run 24 hours a day, further giving more consistent results , each component is easier to trace, and the people who used to inspect lenses can be used for higher, more  production work.

This is relevant for Indian manufacturers especially the ones who in their plant make small, detailed parts where inspection slows output and a missed defect is costly. ORAFOL’s gains came from fitting the cameras to the part along with the software and the system that orchestrates this entire setup.