A novel vision system for CRT panel auto-inspection

The defects of a 3-D translucent hull CRT panel may include scratches, blemishes, cracks, bubbles, or collapsed portions. Defects may occur on the inside surface, outside surface, or interior of the glass. We designed and developed three sets of vision systems which can automatically inspect defects in CRT panels. The first system inspects the front-surface and two turn-segments, the second system inspects the other two turn-segments, while the third system inspects the side-wall defects. Two different kinds of lighting environments were developed to highlight the CRT panels and to simplify the image-capturing process. Meanwhile, a set of image processing methods were devised which can reliably detect the defects within the expected processing time. Experimental results demonstrate that the developed vision systems can be used to inspect CRT panels in the production line.