A Electronics Co., Ltd. (name) is an LCD screen manufacturing company. During the production process, the company needs to read the Data Matrix codes of LCD screens of different sizes, and the Data Matrix codes appear randomly on the front and back of the LCD screen. In addition, Data Matrix codes have high requirements on lighting technology, and the smallest size of Data Matrix codes is only 0.5*0.5mm, which requires the code reading solution to be highly adaptable. At present, there are few code readers on the market that support such a small size Data Matrix code, mainly foreign code reader brands, and they are expensive.
In the specific code reading process, the LCD screen is moved under the code reader through a mobile platform or manually placed under the code reader. The limit cylinder is used to roughly position and the servo motor is used to move the code reader and control the code reader to move to Right above the QR code; the debugging code reader displays a clear image. After the manual code reading is successful, configure the parameters for communication with the PLC; trigger the code reader to take a photo through the PLC. After the code reader decodes, the content of the Data Matrix code or NG The information is passed to the PLC.
However, due to the special nature of Data Matrix codes in this application, when the code reader cannot read the code, the operator has to shut down the machine and manually enter the text characters of the code into the system. This manual entry process needs to be repeated multiple times during production, and there is also the fear of data entry errors, resulting in a significant decrease in production volume. Because the decoding success rate required by production is above 99%, and the company’s daily production volume is around a few thousand, the stability requirements for the code reading solution are relatively high.
At this time, we recommended MindVision HM5 series code readers to Factory A. The HM5 code reader provides a stable Data Matrix code algorithm. The algorithm can handle various situations where the appearance quality of the code is degraded, and the reading rate can reach more than 99.96%.
In customer test applications, the HM5 code reader demonstrated excellent code reading performance. In its code reading workflow, after the product reaches the designated location, the PLC triggers the code reader to read the code through the SLMP protocol. The HM5 code reader uses “burst” mode and decodes three times by default without PLC intervention. After successful decoding, the decoding result is output to the PLC, and then the PLC sends it to the customer’s traceability system. The decoding time of the entire process is controlled within 3 seconds. If the default three times of decoding fails, customer-defined error information will be output. This not only improves the decoding rate and reduces manual intervention, but also avoids multiple triggering of the PLC, improves the tempo of code reading, and indirectly improves production efficiency.
At the production site, the HM5 code reader successfully solved the LCD screen code reading problem in Factory A. It can easily read Data Matrix codes with a minimum size of 0.5*0.5mm with extremely high reading rate, which greatly improves the production efficiency of enterprises and reduces the workload of on-site operators. At the same time, the HM5 code reader is equipped with debugging software and real-time screen debugging, which facilitates installation and debugging. Its communication configuration is simple to operate, supports multiple protocols, facilitates communication with PLC, and requires simple writing and maintenance of PLC programs.
