Projects
Omniview Inspection
Cognex Omniview System
Saber is proud to be one of only five nationally certified engineering firms that can deploy the Cognex OmniView Inspection System. Imagine how useful it would be to inspect the entire cylindrical surface of bottles, cans, vials, or cosmetic containers without the need for orientation or accurate positioning. This seemingly impossible capability is what OmniViewTM technology from Cognex provides. OmniView uses 4 cameras to obtain a 360-degree view of all features on the entire surface. It can read barcodes, verify text, inspect graphics and measure features at production line speeds of up to 1,200 parts per minute.
OmniView is a revolutionary vision software technology that uses images from multiple cameras to create one seamless and undistorted 360-degree image of any cylindrical surface. Obtaining such an image without OmniView requires stopping and rotating each cylindrical object in front of a line scan camera—a complex process that is too slow for today’s high-speed production lines.
Instead, OmniView uses images from multiple area cameras positioned around the cylindrical object to instantly generate a virtual 3D surface model. OmniView then creates a seamless, undistorted, “unwrapped” image of the complete surface to which optical character recognition (OCR), barcode reading, and other machine vision software tools can be applied. Eliminating the complex and expensive requirement to mechanically spin parts in order to inspect them dramatically reduces complexity, lowers cost and significantly boosts throughput.
“In the food, beverage, and pharmaceutical packaging industries, OmniView allows customers to more cost-effectively avoid mislabeling errors, comply with evolving safety standards, and ensure product quality,” said Marilyn Matz, Cognex Senior VP, PC Vision Products Group. “OmniView’s non-stop, no-spin inspection of directly-printed or labeled cylindrical containers is ideal for achieving accurate, reliable non-contact, 100-percent inspection on even the fastest-paced packaging lines.”
OmniView handles a wide range of packaging applications to ensure product quality and package integrity such as : 
• Checking for date code presence
• Confirming package and product match
• Preventing packaging mix ups
• Detecting wrong or mislabeled products
• Reading 1D barcodes and 2D matrix codes
• Verifying required allergen statements
• Assessing print quality
• Checking for torn or missing labels
• Inspecting package graphics
OmniView™ Cylindrical Product Inspection System
This system uses images acquired from one or more cameras, and combines those images to create a seamless and undistorted image of an object surface. As long as a feature of interest appears in one or more of the physical camera images, it can be inspected.
OmniView completely eliminates the complex and expensive requirement to mechanically spin parts in order to inspect them. This reduces production line complexity, lowers costs, and increases production speed.
• Eliminates the need to spin or handle parts in order to inspect them
• Handles random part rotation, tilt and position
• Allows entire curved surface to be inspected at the same time
• Enables non-contact 100 percent inspection at up to 1200ppm, at standard resolution
• Provides extremely robust solutions that result from Cognex leading-edge vision algorithms
• Offers a faster and less expensive solution than line scan cameras
A seamless and undistorted image of a cylindrical pharmaceutical product simplifies inspections needed for product safety and traceability. The 360-degree virtual image of cans and bottles facilitates label inspection and code reading.
Vancouver Convention Center
Micro Chip Robotic Handling and Inspection
Integration is what we at Saber excel at, and the robotic cells designed and built for a leading automotive chip manufacturer are a prime example. Utilizing Fanuc Robots, Unitek Laser Marking Systems, Sick 3D sensors, Cognex Insight cameras and Omron PLCs, Saber Engineering has provided four custom robotic cells that mark, inspect and test gyro chips for a fast paced production line. The precise handling provided by the 5-axis Fanuc robot ensures that the chips are handled in the delicate manner required, and the Sick 3D sensor ensures the chips leads are co-planar and are ready final assembly by the end user.
Below is an example of the 3D image used for the Pin Coplanarity Check
Part & Marking Verification
Saber Engineering has Implemented several Inkjet, Laser and Thermal transfer Part Marking Systems. The system below is an example of an ink jet printer that utilizes HP ink cartridges in an industrial printehead. The Barcode shown below is then graded and the human readable text is verified using a Cognex Insight's OCV tools.
Saber Used a Miyachi-Unitech laser to ablate a nickel plated kovar microchip lid. Saber designed the machine in the background to index the tray of chips for Cognex Insight 2D code verification and OCV.
Kenwood Winery Palletizing Robot
Partnering with KUKA Robotics, Saber provided a wine palletizing solution for Kenwood that to avoid manual vacu-hoist palletizing. The flexibility of the Kuka robot combined with a Saber custom end effector provides a robust case palletizing system that can handle a variety of cases sizes and an endless number of palletizing patterns. This solution is not only cost effective and flexible, it is extremely robust, enabling high efficiency and uptime rates.
Northwest Interceptor PLC and SCADA
The entire Northwest Interceptor will stretch 37 miles, passing twice under the Sacramento River as it runs from Citrus Heights through North Natomas and West Sacramento before snaking its way down to the regional wastewater treatment plant near Elk Grove. New pumping stations will be installed along the way to help keep wastewater flowing. At full capacity, the line will carry 200 million gallons of wastewater daily, serving the equivalent of 290,000 homes.
Saber Engineering’s primary scope for this project is to provide professional services consisting of control system project management, PLC and Operator Interface Terminal (OIT) programming (local only) and documentation, startup and commissioning services.
City Of Sacramento Water Treatment PLC and SCADA Systems
The Sacramento River Intake isequipped with Saber Panels and PLCs
The City of Sacramento contracted with Saber Engineering to provide software design, software development, system integration, startup and testing of the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system upgrade. The project was to replace the existing OPTO22 based system with a Hot Standby Quantum PLC based system and to reconfigure the existing Intellution SCADA nodes to communicate with the PLCs.
Saber developed the technical procedure to implement each deliverable and defined and maintained performance of the standards or quality assurance principles. The PE’s prepared the complex design specifications, pinpointed code problems during testing, resolved technical or business problems, performed client relations to assure requirements are being satisfied and reported any changes to the PM.
The PE, assisted by the PM, performed all the PLC programming for the project. This included software design for the plant flow pacing control loops. All PLC programming was performed using Saber Engineering’s best practice modular approach using a common development platform.
Saber performed the network design to integrate the Fairbairn HMI into the existing City of Sacramento control system LAN/WAN. The network integration used single mode fiber transceivers and Microwave radios to transmit PLC and Intellution data the three miles to the end user’s central headquarters.
Saber has implemented all phases of the Network including: HMI, PLC controls, telemetry, network communications, alarming, reports, trending and maintenance.