cnx_vinyl/docs/equipment/inline-optical-qc.md

Inline optical QC: devices for the record inspection station

Research note, October 2026. This note works out which devices can do layer 1 of quality automation, the optical check of every pressed record. Prices come from vendor shops, vendor pages or third-party listings, and the source is named each time. Anything without a source is marked as an estimate. Nothing here is a quote.

Short answer. Nobody sells a vinyl inspection machine. The template is the CD and DVD in-line scanner: spin the disc once under a line-scan camera that looks along the radius, with angled lights, and measure the height with lasers during the same turn. That can be built from standard parts:

• a 4k line-scan camera per side, with dark-field and bright-field lights;
• a colour area camera per side for the label;
• two laser distance sensors for warp;
• a servo turntable with a centring chuck;
• an edge PC running open-source vision software on NixOS.

The hardware costs about USD 17k to 33k per station (bill of materials, partly estimates). At launch one station serves both presses, the Duplex system and the Classic, and it checks the records after they have cooled (decided October 2026; see where it sits). A concept model of the station, an aluminium profile frame with a rim-belt conveyor and all sensors mounted to it, is in the station setup.

What the station has to catch

Defect	How it shows optically	Device	Limit or source
Non-fill (PVC did not fill the stamper)	dull, matte patches in the groove band, most often at the outer edge of 180 g records (AnalogPlanet)	line-scan camera, low-angle (dark-field) light	any patch; correlates with audible defects
Stitching and flow lines	lines or streaks in the groove sheen	same	any visible line
Bubbles, inclusions, black specks	dark or bright points; in clear and translucent colours seen best in transmitted light	line-scan with a back light	size threshold set in trials
Debris, scratches, scuffs	bright points or lines in dark-field, dark in bright-field	both lights	size threshold set in trials
Edge trim (burr, wrong diameter)	the record edge in the line-scan image	line-scan	trim drawing
Label wrong, on the wrong side, off-centre, wrinkled, bubbled, misprinted	colour image of the label against the approved artwork from the order	colour area camera, ring or dome light	artwork in ERPNext
Off-centre hole (eccentricity)	the groove band edges trace a sine wave in the unwrapped image when the hole sits off the spiral centre	line-scan, fit of the lead-in and the finishing groove	0.2 mm hole to groove spiral (IEC 98-1987, DIN 45547-1981, as tabulated here); Stamper Discs aims below 0.1 mm on the record and 0.05 mm on the stamper (Stamper Discs, 2025)
Centre hole size	hole diameter in a backlit image, or a go/no-go mandrel	area camera (optional)	7.24 mm, -0/+0.09 mm (same table)
Warp: edge run-out and dish	height change over one turn	two laser distance sensors, or one laser line profiler	Mobineko rejects above 0.5 mm (black), 1.0 mm (colour) or 1.5 mm (special effects) edge run-out per turn, or above 2 mm (black) or 3 mm (colour) between edge and centre (Mobineko)
Colour off the approved test pressing	colour values against the first approved records of the job	calibrated colour camera	tolerance set per job
Record temperature at unload (process signal, optional)	temperature map	thermal camera	trend against warp

No camera can see a wrong master cut into good-looking grooves, or clicks from defects smaller than its resolution. Those stay with the sampled audio comparison (layer 3). Optical and audio checks complement each other.

Who does this already

• No vinyl product. A search in October 2026 found no inline inspection machine for vinyl records on sale. The presses do not offer one either. The Newbilt Classic's feature list stops at automatic unloading, the spindle stack, cycle recording and OPC UA (Newbilt Classic).

• CD and DVD lines had it, and that is the template. Dr. Schenk's ISM in-line scanner (brochure, 2007):

  • a 2048-pixel, 12-bit line-scan camera with LED lights;
  • one turn in 600 ms or less, 20 µm radial resolution;
  • radial and tangential disc deformation measured at 1,000 points;
  • a defect classifier, on embedded Linux.

  Basler began in this market in 1990 for PolyGram in Hanover (IMVE) and sold the optical-media business to Xiris in 2009 (Vision Systems Design). A vinyl record is a bigger, black, grooved disc, but the method carries over.

• Precision Record Pressing (Ontario), 2023. Their in-house AQA system takes the first and second record of each order. Surface-scanning cameras built into the lids of modified turntables scan both records, then both are played in sync and compared with the master (PRP). It works on samples and is not for sale, but it is the closest vinyl precedent.

• Czech Technical University, Prague. A bachelor thesis built an automated optical defect check for LPs in LabVIEW and ran lighting experiments (CTU thesis). A 2018 paper from the same faculty identified defects with a wavelet method and classified them with KNN, and got 57 % of records right (CTU, 2018).

• Plants check by hand today. Mobineko measures flatness with a micrometer gauge and a laser level on a modified turntable (Mobineko). Third Man checks flatness and label orientation by eye as records leave the press (WIRED).

The station

How it works. The record goes onto a centring chuck: a mandrel expands in the 7.24 mm hole and a ring supports the label area. A servo turntable with an encoder turns it once in about 1 s. Both sides are imaged during that one turn, one camera set above and one below. The lights are strobed on alternate lines, so the same turn gives a dark-field, a bright-field and a transmitted-light image. Stacking line images from one turn into one picture is standard multi-light line-scan practice (estimate for this application; to prove in trials). The PC unwraps each image into a strip of radius against angle, which makes rings straight lines and an off-centre hole a sine wave.

Function	Device, per side unless noted	Examples	Price signal
Surface	4k monochrome line-scan camera along the radius, with a lens, plus a dark-field and a bright-field line light	Basler racer 2 r2L4096 (GigE, 14 to 29 kHz); Hikrobot MV-CL042-91GM (GigE, 4096 × 7 µm pixels, 28 kHz, 80 kHz in high-bandwidth mode, GenICam, Linux; datasheet); Cognex In-Sight 3800 Line Scan (smart camera, 4K at 84 kHz, encoder inputs, AI tools on board; specs)	Basler 4k GigE line-scan from USD 857 to 1,088 in Basler's web shop (price listing); lens USD 300 to 800 and line lights USD 500 to 1,500 each (estimates)
Transmitted light	a diffuse line light under the record for the top camera	any line-light maker	USD 500 to 1,500 (estimate)
Label	5 to 8 MP colour area camera with a ring or dome light	Basler ace 2 a2A2840-14gcPRO	USD 1,119 (Basler web shop, same listing)
Warp, simple	two laser distance sensors under the record, at the outer edge and at mid radius	Micro-Epsilon optoNCDT 1420	from EUR 470 list (Micro-Epsilon); ILD1420-25 about USD 1,600 at a reseller (Radwell)
Warp and thickness, full map (alternative)	laser line profiler across the radius, giving a full height map	Keyence LJ-X8000 (warpage and flatness tools, compensates eccentricity; Keyence); LMI Gocator 2500 (up to 10 kHz, blue laser; LMI); Micro-Epsilon scanCONTROL	no list price found; USD 8k to 20k (estimate)
Thermal (optional)	infrared camera over the unload position	Optris Xi 400 (80 Hz, line-scan mode)	from EUR 1,950 (Optris); USD 2,995 at a US reseller (moviTHERM)
Compute	edge PC with a GPU, NixOS	any industrial PC	USD 2k to 4k (estimate)
Mechanics	servo turntable, centring chuck, encoder, frame, light shield, reject gate, stack light	local machine builder	USD 4k to 10k (estimate)

Resolution. These are worked figures for a 160 mm field and a 4,096-pixel line:

• Radial: about 39 µm per pixel.
• Along the groove, at 14 kHz and one turn per second: about 66 µm per line at the outer edge (146 mm radius) and 22 µm at the label edge. At 28 kHz these halve.
• What that sees: millimetre-sized non-fill, flow lines and specks of about 0.1 mm and up. It does not resolve single grooves.
• How defects show: the camera sees how the groove field scatters light, so a defect has to change that scatter. That is why lighting trials come first, as in the CTU thesis.

Eccentricity. At the 0.1 mm target, the sine wave in the unwrapped image is about 2.6 pixels high. A sub-pixel fit along the lead-in edge and the finishing groove (106.4 ± 0.8 mm diameter in IEC 98) over about 14,000 lines should repeat within 10 to 20 µm. That figure is an estimate and has to be shown in trials. The chuck has to centre on the hole exactly, because the station measures the groove spiral against the chuck.

Throughput.

	Duplex cell	Classic
Output	a record every 15 to 20 s from its two presses (at 30 to 40 s per press; Newbilt quotes about 30 s, and the fleet calculator takes 3 records a minute as 40 s)	a 180 g record every 28 s (Newbilt)
Station time per record	about 1 s of scan plus 2 to 3 s to load and unload (estimate)	same

That leaves slack at both stations. One central station takes the launch plant's 5 to 6 records a minute with room to spare, and that is the launch setup (where it sits). A station at each cell would catch a non-fill streak within a cycle or two; that stays the option for a larger fleet.

The station setup: frame, conveyor and sensors

A concept model of one station, drawn in FreeCAD from the script build_station.py (views from render_station.py; model file inline-qc-station.FCStd). It is a layout to take to a machine builder, not a fabrication drawing. The frame uses the real 8-slot 40 series section (slots, centre bore, corner cavities) with cast angle brackets in the corners; bought parts are drawn as their outline boxes. The script checks that every part reaches the floor through parts it touches, so nothing floats.

The labelled view for presentations, made with render_annotated.py (FreeCAD view and label positions) and annotate_render.py (labels, Pillow).

Records run from the infeed (back left, a translucent red special on the belts) through the light-tight tunnel to the reject pusher and the outfeed stop (front right). The cabinet sits under the outfeed, the reject bin behind it.

Frame. The frame is built from 40 × 40 mm 8-slot aluminium profile (32 m in 45 pieces) on two 40 × 80 mm base beams, with 24 cast angle brackets in the corners and eight levelling feet. It is 1.9 m long, 0.65 m wide and 1.5 m high, plus the stack light. The reject bin adds 0.4 m behind it. Records travel at 900 mm, a normal working height.

The middle 0.8 m is a tunnel closed with black panels on all sides (4.3 m²), because the line-scans need their own light only. The front panel is a door with a safety switch. The records enter and leave through low slots in the end walls. The reject zone has a clear polycarbonate guard. All camera and light brackets clamp into the slots, so heights and angles can be moved during the lighting trials.

Conveyor. Two 6 mm PU round belts run under the record's rim, 148.5 mm from the centre line. That is outside the recorded area: a 12" record is 301.6 mm across and its grooves end at 292.6 mm at most (IEC 98, as tabulated here). The belt therefore touches only the raised edge that records are made to stand on, never a groove. The centre stays open, so cameras and the chuck can reach the record from below.

The belts run on UHMW slide strips and are driven by one shaft at the outfeed end. Side guides with a flared mouth centre the record at the infeed. Supported on two rim lines, a warm 180 g record sags about 1 mm in the middle (beam estimate). The launch setup feeds cooled records, which are stiffer; the trials should confirm that the sag does no harm. For 10" and 7" records the belt spacing moves in on a slide; the model shows the 12" setting.

Station	Position from the infeed end	What happens
Infeed	200 mm	the finishing operator puts each cooled record down (at a press-side station: the press operator or the Classic's unloader); a presence sensor starts the cycle
Label gate	520 mm	both colour cameras flash the labels on the fly through the open centre (exposure about 20 µs, under 10 µm blur at 0.5 m/s); the top camera also reads the dead-wax code that ties the record to its stamper, and so to its press and cycle (readability to test, as in digital factory)
Inspection	880 mm	a through-beam on the leading edge stops the belts; the chuck lifts the record 75 mm off them (the pad waits below the belt plane), expands the mandrel in the 7.24 mm hole and turns it once in about 1 s
Reject	1,320 mm	a pneumatic rodless cylinder on a bridge pushes a reject sideways by its edge onto a felt-lined chute at the back and into the bin
Outfeed	1,715 mm	good records wait at a soft end stop; the station holds the next one while the outfeed is full

Inspection zone. The record is shown lifted on the chuck. The two line-scans look at opposite radii along the conveyor axis, because no belt crosses that line:

• Top camera: reads the downstream radius, from 50 to 155 mm, from 330 mm above. A coaxial line light sits under it, two dark-field line lights sit at 20° either side, and a diffuse backlight below the record gives transmitted light for clear colours.
• Bottom camera: reads the upstream radius from below with the same set of lights.
• Bottom dark-field lights: these sit outside the record's footprint, above the rails, so the conveyed record passes them. They light the underside at about 8°, true dark-field.
• Warp lasers: two lasers under the record trace circles at 90 and 130 mm radius during the turn.
• Spindle drive: an encoder on the spindle shaft clocks both line-scans; the lasers are sampled with the servo position (see the spindle servo below).
• Lift drive: the lift is a guided pneumatic cylinder, and the spindle is belt-driven from a servo set to the side. That keeps the bottom camera's view cone clear, which the elevation shows.
• Thermal camera (option): hangs at the tunnel entry. It only makes sense at a press-side station; cooled records show no temperature pattern, so the launch setup leaves it out.

Spindle servo and camera clock. The spindle runs on a 100 W EtherCAT servo kit, StepperOnline A6-EC100L2A1-M17: a 40 mm motor (0.32 N·m rated, 1.12 N·m peak, 17-bit magnetic encoder, 0.03 kg·cm² rotor) with the A6-200EC drive. It costs USD 123.29 from the China warehouse (StepperOnline, October 2026). The conveyor uses the same kit, so one spare covers both.

• Belt ratio 1:6 (for example 15 to 90 teeth). The record alone is about 20.5 kg·cm² (180 g at 150.8 mm radius); with the spindle head the load is about 25 to 35 kg·cm² (estimate). That is about 1,000 times the rotor direct; through 1:6 the ratio comes down to about 28, inside the drive's tuning range. The motor then runs at 360 rpm for one turn a second.
• Torque is no limit. Reaching one turn a second in 0.15 s takes about 0.13 N·m at the spindle and 0.02 N·m at the motor (our arithmetic), well under the rating.
• Camera clock from a spindle encoder. The A6-EC drive has no divided encoder output: its CN1 port carries five inputs, two of them touch probes, and three outputs (A6-EC manual). So an incremental encoder (RS-422 line driver, 2,000 to 2,500 pulses a turn) sits on the spindle shaft. Its A/B signals clock both line-scans directly (Basler racer 2 encoder control, Basler), so line timing never passes through software, and it measures the spindle itself rather than the motor behind the belt. The same line also runs to an EtherCAT encoder terminal (EL5101), which counts A/B and latches the index once a turn. The scan, the laser traces and the servo then share one angle reference.
• STO version, looked at in October 2026. StepperOnline sells the A6-EC drive with Safe Torque Off only from 400 W: A6-EC400H2B1-M17-STO with a brake (USD 157.91, StepperOnline) or the same without a brake, A6-EC400H2A1-M17-STO (USD 129.60). The STO is two 24 V inputs, STO1 and STO2, on CN5, but its manual names no safety rating: no SIL or PL figure and no certificate (A6-EC-STO manual). On that document alone it cannot replace the contactor in the safety circuit. The brake holds nothing on a horizontal spindle or conveyor. Recommendation: stay with the 100 W kit. If StepperOnline confirms a rated STO in writing, switch both axes to the version without a brake and drop the contactor; its 0.60 kg·cm² rotor then needs only a 1:2 to 1:3 belt.

Sensor list. Everything that measures the record, and everything the station controller needs to run the station. Lights, drives and cylinders are in the bill of materials.

Sensor	Qty	Example	Where	What it measures	USD each
4k monochrome line-scan camera, GigE, 50 mm lens	2: top and bottom	Basler racer 2 r2L4096, Hikrobot MV-CL042-91GM	inspection zone, on opposite radii (top 330 mm above the record)	surface: non-fill, stitching, flow lines, specks, bubbles, under dark-field, bright-field and transmitted light on alternate lines; eccentricity from the groove spiral	857 to 1,088 (Basler web shop); lens 300 to 800 (estimate)
8 MP colour area camera, GigE, 16 mm lens, ring light	2: top and bottom	Basler ace 2 a2A2840-14gcPRO	label gate, 520 mm from the infeed	right label on the right side, print, label centring; the top camera also reads the stamper number in the run-out	1,119 (Basler web shop); lens and ring light 300 to 800 (estimate)
Laser distance sensor	2	Micro-Epsilon optoNCDT 1420	under the record, at 90 and 130 mm radius; analog output to the EtherCAT analog input	warp: height traced round two circles during the turn	from EUR 470 list; ILD1420-25 about 1,600 at a reseller
Servo encoder, 17-bit	2: spindle and conveyor	StepperOnline A6-EC100L2A1-M17 kit	in each motor; position over EtherCAT	spindle angle for the sequence and the warp traces; conveyor travel	in the kit, 123.29
Incremental encoder, RS-422 line driver, 2,000 to 2,500 pulses a turn	1	Omron E6B2-CWZ1X class	on the spindle shaft	A/B clock both line-scans; A/B and the index go to the EL5101 encoder terminal, which counts the spindle angle	53 to 282 (geizhals.de, October 2026)
Diffuse photoelectric sensor	3	any industrial make	looking up through the open centre: infeed, label trigger, outfeed	a record at the infeed starts the cycle; the trigger fires the label cameras; a full outfeed holds the next record	50 to 150 (estimate)
Through-beam photoelectric sensor	1 pair	any industrial make	across the conveyor at the inspection position	the record's leading edge; stops the belts over the chuck	50 to 150 (estimate)
Cylinder position switch	6	SMC D-M9 class	lift (up, down), reject pusher (home, out), mandrel (open, clamped)	confirms each move before the next step	25 to 60 (estimate)
Safety door switch	1	any safety-rated make	tunnel door	stops the station when the door opens, through the safety relay with the e-stop	in the door lot, 120 to 350 (estimate)
Thermal camera (option, not in the launch setup)	0 or 1	Optris Xi 400	over the unload position, at a press-side station only	temperature map of a warm record, trended against warp	from EUR 1,950
Laser line profiler (alternative to the two lasers)	0 or 1	Keyence LJ-X8000, LMI Gocator 2500, Micro-Epsilon scanCONTROL	across the radius	full height and thickness map	8k to 20k (estimate)

So the launch station carries four cameras, two lasers, two servo encoders and the spindle encoder, four photoelectric sensors, six cylinder switches and the door switch. The cameras go to the edge PC, the spindle encoder straight to the line-scans, and everything else onto EtherCAT.

Cycle per record (estimate).

Step	Time
Convey to the inspection position	1.5 to 2.5 s
Lift and clamp	0.5 s
One turn, with run-up and stop	1.3 s
Lower	0.3 s
Convey out, with a push if rejected	1 to 2 s
Total	about 5 to 6 s

A Duplex cell delivers a record every 15 to 20 s and the Classic one every 28 s; together that is 5 to 6 records a minute, against the 10 to 12 the station can take. The PC finishes the verdict while the record is lowered and carried to the pusher.

Control: EtherCAT (decided October 2026; it replaces the small PLC of the first draft). The full plan, with the I/O list, geizhals.de prices, safety circuit, bench test and build order, is in inline-qc-control-plan.md.

• Station controller: a fanless mini PC, Intel N100 with Intel i226-V ports, EUR 394 to 456 on geizhals.de (October 2026). It runs NixOS with the PREEMPT_RT kernel, declared in the plant's clan like the edge PC. It is the EtherCAT master and runs the station sequence, which we write ourselves; there is no PLC.
• Master software, open source either way:
  • QiTech's EtherCAT library on EtherCrab: qitech_lib (LGPL-3.0), the layer under QiTech Control, which runs QiTech's own extrusion and winding machines on NixOS. It brings distributed clocks, SDO and PDO handling, Beckhoff drivers and a CiA402 servo driver to copy for the A6-EC; EtherCrab (GitHub, MIT or Apache-2.0) is the pure Rust master underneath. It fits the Rust stack of the factory application, and is the first choice.
  • IgH EtherCAT Master: the mature fallback (GPL-2.0, its library LGPL-2.1), packaged in nixpkgs (MyNixOS). Its native igc driver for the i226 is listed for the 6.12 kernel, so with IgH, pin the 6.12 LTS kernel (IgH device drivers).
• On the bus, in one line: an EK1101 coupler with EL1809 (16 inputs: photoelectric sensors, cylinder switches, door and e-stop status), EL2809 (16 outputs: valves, stack light), EL3152 (two 4 to 20 mA inputs for the warp lasers) and EL5101 (spindle encoder), then the spindle drive and the conveyor drive at the end of the line. The small A6-200EC takes its control power from the main supply, so it leaves the bus when the safety contactors open; at the end it cuts nothing else off. The cycle is 1 ms with distributed clocks. The spindle runs in cyclic synchronous position mode, the conveyor in cyclic synchronous velocity.
• Warp traces: the lasers are sampled in the same cycle as the spindle encoder count, so each trace comes with its angles: about 1,000 points a turn at 1 ms (our arithmetic). The optoNCDT 1420 has a 4 to 20 mA output, hence the EL3152 rather than a voltage terminal.
• Safety stays hardwired: the e-stop and the door switch sit on a safety relay that drops a contactor in the drive supply. The 100 W kit has no STO input; in the A6-EC list, STO versions start at 400 W.
• Edge PC: the NixOS edge PC with the GPU, under the outfeed, takes the four GigE cameras on PoE and the light controllers. It talks to the station controller over plain Ethernet (record in place, turn done, verdict with the reason) and sends the result string and images to the factory system (see digital factory). Keeping the master off this PC keeps the GPU load away from the real-time loop.
• HMI: a browser page from the station controller on the 10 inch touch panel.

Utilities are 230 V single phase at about 1 kW and 6 bar compressed air (estimates).

Bill of materials. The line-by-line list with sources is in inline-qc-station-bom.csv. By group, per station:

Group	USD	Main parts
Frame	0.8k to 1.6k	32 m of 40 × 40, 3.8 m of 40 × 80, angle brackets, feet
Enclosure and guards	0.3k to 0.7k	black panels, polycarbonate, door switch
Conveyor	0.4k to 1.1k	round belts, pulleys, slide strips, 100 W EtherCAT servo drive
Handling	1.9k to 4.5k	guided lift cylinder, 100 W EtherCAT spindle servo, spindle head with mandrel, rodless cylinder, pneumatics
Vision	7.7k to 12.5k	2 line-scans, 2 colour cameras, lenses, 2 coaxial, 4 dark-field and 2 backlights, 2 ring lights, controllers
Sensors	1.5k to 4.6k	2 laser distance sensors, presence and stop sensors, cylinder switches, spindle encoder
Control	4.2k to 7.7k	EtherCAT controller and I/O, edge PC with GPU, HMI, safety, cabinet and wiring
Total	17k to 33k (0.55M to 1.08M THB)	thermal camera (USD 2.1k to 3.0k) not included

Open points for the machine builder.

1. Sag: confirm that the rim-only support does not mark or bend the records: cooled ones at launch, warm ones at a press-side station.
2. Static: fresh PVC attracts dust, so an ionising bar at the infeed may be needed. Otherwise the station counts dust it attracted itself.
3. Classic hand-off: only for a press-side station later; at launch the Classic stacks on its spindle as built.
4. Belt width: a quick-change spacing for 10" and 7" records.
5. Space: at launch the station and the cooling racks stand at the start of the finishing block; a press-side station later has to fit the 5 × 3 m Duplex cell next to the trimmer.

Where it sits

Launch setup: one station for both presses, after cooling (decided October 2026).

• To the cooling racks. The records leave both presses on spindle stacks as they do today: the Classic stacks by itself, with its cooling plates (pressing line), and the Duplex operator stacks the trimmed records. Each full stack gets a label, scanned at the press, with the press, the stamper set and the first and last cycle. The stacks go into the cooling racks first in, first out.
• The queue. 24 hours of cooling before sleeving is accepted practice, and some plants cut it to 8 hours (Stamper Discs). The station takes the stacks at the end of that time. A single record would reach room temperature within minutes in still air (our estimate for a 1.8 mm disc), but records keep settling for hours, so the queue is measured in hours. The racks hold about one day of output: 2,800 to 3,100 records at the launch plant (the 850k target to the ~0.94M capacity in the calculator, over 300 days).
• At the station. The finishing operator takes each record off the cooled stack and puts it on the infeed. Good records leave the outfeed into sleeving; a reject goes into the bin, and the HMI shows the reason. Finishing handles every record anyway, so the station adds no handling step.
• What it gains.
  • Warp and centring are measured on settled records, so the reading is the release value; no separate sampling of cooled records is needed.
  • One station instead of two: USD 17k to 33k instead of 50k to 105k (estimates).
  • The Classic needs no change to its unloader.
  • The questions about warm records drop out: sag on the rim belts and the thermal camera.
• What it costs. A defect is found hours after pressing instead of within a cycle or two. Three things cover that gap:
  1. The Duplex operator still sees every record.
  2. Press telemetry flags process drift every cycle (layer 2).
  3. An early lane: the first records of every run, and the first after each stamper change, go to the station warm, straight from the press. Their surface and label verdicts count; their warp is only an early warning. The station runs at about half its capacity at launch, so there is room for this lane.
• Record key. Away from the press, the station takes the key from the stack label and the record's place in the stack (the top record is the last one pressed). It checks that against the stamper number read in the run-out; the readability of that code is still to test. Where the check fails, the result stays tied to the stack: press, stamper set and time window (traceability).
• Capacity. The launch plant makes 5 to 6 records a minute and the station takes 10 to 12. One station covers about two Duplex systems and two Classics at the calculator's planning rates (3 + 3 + 2 + 2 = 10 a minute). Past that, add a second station or move to stations at the presses.

Later option: a station at each press. It finds a defect streak within a cycle or two, at the price of one station per cell, and it reads warm records, so release on warp still needs cooled samples.

• Duplex cell. After the edge trimmer, in front of the operator, before the spindle. The operator puts each trimmed record on the infeed; a stack light and the HMI show green or red; a good record waits at the outfeed for the spindle.
• Classic. Ask Newbilt whether the unload handling can set the record down on the station's infeed instead of the spindle. If not, a fixed area camera over the unload position covers surface and label, and leaves warp and eccentricity to samples.

Plant view. The plant and business plan calculator draws the station with the cooling racks in the room at the start of the finishing block.

Two software routes

	Smart camera or vendor controller	Open, PC-based
Examples	Cognex In-Sight 3800 with edge learning (about USD 8,500 a unit in a third-party listing); Keyence CV-X or XG-X with LumiTrax, which separates shape from surface pattern on shiny parts (Keyence); CV-X controllers listed at about USD 5,400 to 5,500 on resale sites (BigGo); Keyence quotes only locally	GenICam cameras (Basler, Hikrobot, or Keyence's VJ series) with: - Aravis for acquisition (LGPL-2.1, GigE Vision and USB3 Vision, packaged in nixpkgs as 0.8.35; GitHub, MyNixOS), or Harvester (Apache-2.0, needs the camera maker's GenTL producer; GitHub); - OpenCV; - anomalib for learned defect detection (Apache-2.0, PatchCore and others; PyPI)
For	fast set-up, vendor support, tested tools	we own the code and the data, no licence per unit, fits the NixOS stack and the service offer to other plants (digital factory)
Against	closed, Windows set-up tools; the polar unwrap, eccentricity fit and per-job learning still have to be built on top	we build and maintain it; the first station takes longer

Keyence's VJ series sits between the two. It sells Keyence GigE cameras and LumiTrax lights for PC-based software, with GenICam, OpenCV and HALCON listed as supported (Keyence VJ).

Recommendation: take the open route for the station itself. Before that, ask Keyence Thailand for its free demo and test report on sample records with LumiTrax. It costs nothing, teaches us the lighting, and gives a benchmark for our own result.

Colour and special records

Specials are planned at 60 % or more of output, and they are the hard part:

• Marbled and splatter: the pattern is random, so a fixed golden image cannot work. The model learns each job from its first approved records and flags what differs. That is few-shot anomaly detection, for example PatchCore in anomalib, with the operator confirming the first flags.
• Clear and translucent colours: transmitted light shows bubbles and specks well.
• Picture discs: they need the label-style print comparison over the whole face.
• Black: the easiest.

Expect more false rejects on specials in the first months (estimate). The reject rates in the factory console demo are simulated.

Cost

Item	Estimate
Hardware per station, from the bill of materials	USD 17k to 33k (0.55M to 1.08M THB)
First station: frame build and machined parts, lighting trials, software, training data	2 to 4 person-months, USD 15k to 40k (our own team with a local machine builder)
Launch plant: one station for both presses, after cooling	the hardware above, USD 17k to 33k, plus the first-station work (about USD 32k to 73k in all, 1.0M to 2.4M THB)

All three figures are estimates; the bill of materials names a source for each priced line. They fit inside the existing metrology launch-tier line, USD 170k to 460k for XRF, inline vision and the audio station (total investment). The plan prices therefore do not change. That line has no published split, so the vision share is not yet confirmed.

Where to buy in Thailand

Brand	Channel	Status
Keyence	Keyence (Thailand), direct sales	free demos and test reports, as Keyence offers in other markets (Keyence); confirm locally
Basler	LINX KK (Thailand), Basler's only official distributor in Thailand (LINX)
Cognex	local distributor	still to name
Hikrobot	local distributor or the Chinese route	still to name
Micro-Epsilon, LMI, Optris	local distributor	still to name

Next steps

1. Lighting trials. Get a dozen records with known defects from a partner plant: non-fill, stitching, bubbles, an off-centre one, and a splatter colour. Test them with a borrowed line-scan camera and two lights.
2. Keyence test. Ask Keyence Thailand for a test report on the same records.
3. Newbilt. Ask how the Classic hands over its spindle stacks and cooling plates (records per stack). Also ask for the cycle counter over OPC UA, so every stack label carries the record key (stamper, press, cycle, side; see digital factory).
4. Warp sensors. Choose between two point lasers and a line profiler once the trials show whether a thickness map is worth the extra cost.
5. EtherCAT bench. Before the frame is built, run one A6-EC kit, the EK1101 with its terminals and the spindle encoder from the mini PC with qitech_lib on EtherCrab: eight tests and pass marks are in the control plan (about THB 56,000 of parts, all reused in the station). If the EtherCrab stack falls short on the drive, repeat the test with the IgH master.
6. Acceptance test. Write it before ordering. It should cover the detection rate per defect class on the trial set, the false-reject rate on good records (black and specials apart), and every result matched to its record key.