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The Power Of Creating Your Own Vision System Tools

By Ivar Keulers on Tue, Feb 22, 2011

As a programmer, you know it takes a lot of time to set up and maintain an inspection for multiple identical parts in one Field of View when each of the parts needs multiple vision tools. Debugging, fine tuning or adding to the group of tools for a part requires you to review an identical set of tools with the same functionality, but with a different part in the field of view (FOV).

Wouldn’t it be great if you could create your own tool and call that tool for the products you have in the FOV? In PPT VISION’s IMPACT Software you can create your own tools.

A big advantage in the IMPACT software is a tool called “CALL TASK.” With this tool, you can call another piece of programming (Task) just like you do with the Call or FUNCTION in Basic programming. The nice thing about this method is that you are able to create TASK inputs and outputs. All this data is stored in the Call Task tool and isn’t overwritten when you run this new “Tool” again.

Example: Here is a small inspection of two identical contact pins in one FOV. Both contacts are inspected –in the same way, so here the tools are just copied.

In this example, we use one piece of the inspection to create a new Task and add INPUTs and OUTPUTs to the task.

In the main inspection tree we can now use the Call Task tool to “Call” the Pin Inspection Task to run the inspection on both tools:

The power of the Call Task tool is enormous as it helps you create faster applications and keep the programming structure clear.

• With Call Task you can create your own tools and sub-applications
• Using a Call Task simplifies your program structure
• Call Tasks can be stored in separate files (support files) using the same tasks for different applications–creating your own tool library
• Call Tasks can be converted to “Composite tools” (at PPT VISION)
• Call Tasks and Composite tools are available on PPT VISION’s Website for download. 

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