Thermal Image Stitching for Improved Quality Control in Thermoforming Machines

The thermoforming process is associated with both environmental sustainability and cost-effectiveness in the industrial sector. This study addresses the comprehensive analysis of the heat distribution patterns of polymer materials undergoing thermoforming in a production line environment. A change in temperature during the heating process on the polymer material has the possibility of causing inconsistencies and errors in the material. The Zero Defects and Zero Waste (ZDZW) HorizonEurope project aims to develop a suite of services designed to reduce errors and waste in industrial environments. One among these services is the implementation of thermal inspection application. Within the scope of this project, data obtained from thermal cameras placed in refrigerator production lines where thermoforming application is used. An inspection software solution is proposed that aims to create entire thermal distributions of polymer parts using thermal image stitching method on this data. The proposed software solution focuses on enabling real-time thermal inspection through precise thermal image stitching.