JPS6222058A - Foreign matter detector - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To allow a device itself to decide whether there is foreign matter present or not by providing a means which discriminates between an ultrasonic wave echo signal reflected by an inspection passage and a body to be measured and an ultrasonic wave echo signal reflected by the foreign matter, and forming the inspection path in a pipe shape. CONSTITUTION:If there is the foreign matter such as hair, the dead body of an insect, a vinyl piece, and a metallic piece, an ultrasonic wave emitted by an ultrasonic wave probe 6n on a foreign matter detecting device is reflected by the foreign matter 18 and returns to the 6n most intensely. Thus, the signal reflected signal from the foreign matter 18 is obtained when there is the foreign matter 18 in the body 17 to be measured, and an ultrasonic wave at specific time to including said signal is digitized by an A/D converter 8, inputted to a frame memory 9, and compared with the contents of a reference data memory 11 by a CPU part 12 to decide on the presence of the foreign matter. When the foreign matter 18 is mixed with the part 17 to be measured, that is detected and a decision signal indicating that there is the foreign matter is sent to a decision output part 13. This signal informs an operator of that or is outputted to an external equipment to take a measure to remove the foreign matter, etc.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to a foreign matter detection device for detecting the presence or absence of foreign matter in an object to be measured, particularly a fluid substance such as food or medicine that is ingested by humans.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 2. Description of the Related Art During the production and processing of food products, medicines, etc. that are ingested by humans, unexpected foreign substances, such as metal pieces, may be mixed in, and it is necessary to remove the mixed foreign substances. For this reason, conventionally foreign substances have been found and removed by visual inspection or detection using a metal detector that applies magnetism.

However, with the former visual inspection, there is a high risk of oversights, and with the latter, it is impossible to detect foreign substances other than metal pieces, such as hair, packaging vinyl pieces, bones, insects, etc. That said, it was difficult.

OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the present invention to provide a foreign object detection device that eliminates the above-mentioned conventional problems and is capable of reliably detecting any foreign object without overlooking it.

Structure of the Invention To achieve this purpose, the present invention provides an inspection path through which an object to be measured passes;
an array-type ultrasonic probe that transmits and receives an ultrasonic beam to and from the object to be measured from outside the inspection path; means for identifying an ultrasonic echo signal reflected from a passage and an object to be measured and an ultrasonic echo signal reflected from a foreign object,
This was achieved by forming the inspection passage into a pipe shape.

Example Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

In FIG. 1, reference numeral 1 denotes an inspection passage constructed as an inspection pipe, and 2 denotes an inspection section of a detection device provided in the inspection pipe 1. In FIG. The inspection section 2 includes an array-type ultrasonic probe 3 that transmits and receives ultrasonic beams, a secondary sound-absorbing material 4 arranged opposite to the array-type ultrasonic probe 3 via an inspection pipe 1, and an array type of these. It has a support spacer 5 that supports the ultrasonic probe 3 and the sound absorbing material 4 on the inspection pipe 1. Note that at least the portion of the inspection pipe 1 corresponding to the inspection section 2 is
It is formed into an angular shape as clearly shown in the figure.

As shown in FIG. 2, the array type ultrasonic probe 3 is an array consisting of a large number of ultrasonic probes 6 arranged at predetermined intervals in a direction perpendicular to the axial direction of the inspection pipe 1. It faces the inner surface 1a of the inspection pipe 1 on the side where the member 4 is installed.

Therefore, the ultrasonic beam transmitted from one ultrasonic probe 6 is reflected by the inner surface 1a and received by that ultrasonic probe 6.

Further, the sound absorbing material 4 serves to block sound waves entering from the outside and prevent false detection.

As shown in FIG. 3, the foreign object detection device according to the present invention includes an array type ultrasonic probe 3 that scans and transmits an ultrasonic wave 1' to a transmission/reception control unit 7. The received signal output of the analog signal from the transmitting/receiving control section 7 is controlled to receive the reflected echo signal at "O" by the Φ converter 8.

It is converted into a digital signal of "1" and stored in the frame memory 9.

Incidentally, reference numeral 10 is an address generating section, which generates address information corresponding to a certain position of the ultrasonic beam. Based on the information from this address generation unit 10,
The transmission/reception direction of the ultrasound beam in the transmission/reception control section 7 is controlled so that the ultrasound beam direction is set in advance for each ultrasound beam.

Reference numeral 11 is a reference data memory for storing the normal state of the object to be measured passing through the inspection pipe 1.

The information given by the frame memory 9 and the Φ converter 8 is sent to the reference data memory 1 by the CPU section 12.
It is compared and analyzed with reference information of No. 1 to determine whether it is good or bad. Then, the result is output to the determination output section 13. In addition, numeral 14 is a display that displays the contents of the reference data memory 11, frame memory 9, etc., 15 is a key operation for inputting data to the reference data memory 11, and
This is a keyboard for inputting judgment criteria. Also, 1
Reference numeral 6 denotes an input/output control section that controls input/output between the CPU section 12, the display 14, the determination output 13, and the keyboard 10.

The operation of the foreign object detection device thus configured is as follows.

For example, the object to be measured 17, such as juice, jam, ham, sausage, etc., is detected as to whether or not foreign matter is mixed in.
As shown in FIG. 2, the inspection pipe is sent to the inspection section 2 in the direction of arrow A in FIG. 1 without creating any gaps. In addition,
In this case, the object to be measured 17 may be fed either continuously or intermittently at intervals of a predetermined amount.

When the detection operation is started, each of the ultrasonic probes 6a, 6b, 6c, . . . emits ultrasonic waves as shown in FIG. At this time, the ultrasonic wave emitted by the ultrasonic probe 6a is reflected on the inner surface 1a of the inspection pipe 1 without being reflected on the way, since no foreign matter is mixed in the object to be measured 17 through which it passes. for a predetermined time t.

The same result as 6a is also obtained for the ultrasonic probes 6b and 6c. However, if there is a foreign object, such as hair, dead insect carcasses, vinyl pieces, metal pieces, etc., as indicated by reference numeral 18 in FIG.
The ultrasonic wave emitted by n is reflected by the foreign object 18, and the 6n
comes back most strongly. Moreover, the return time t is shorter than the above-mentioned predetermined time. This can be expressed in a graph as shown in FIG. 4, where the vertical axis represents the signal magnitude and the horizontal axis represents time.

Thus, if there is a foreign object 18 in the object to be measured 17, a signal reflected by the foreign object 18 is obtained, and a predetermined time t including this signal is obtained. After the ultrasonic signal is digitized by the ~Φ converter 8, it is taken into the frame memory 9, and compared with the reference data memory 11 by the CPU section 12 to determine the presence or absence of foreign matter. If the foreign object 18 is mixed into the object to be measured 17 as described above, it is detected and a judgment signal indicating that there is a foreign object is output to the judgment output section 13. This signal can be used to notify an operator or output it to an external device, etc., so that the operator can take measures such as removing foreign objects.

FIG. 5 shows another embodiment of the present invention, in which the array-type ultrasonic probe 3 is used to emit ultrasonic waves, for example, by the ultrasonic probe 6a, and after a certain time or simultaneously, for example, Ultrasonic waves are emitted from the sonic probe 6n. At this time, a focal point 19 is formed at a point where both ultrasonic waves overlap, and if there is a foreign object at that position, the ultrasonic wave is reflected and received by one of the ultrasonic probes 6. Furthermore, if there is no foreign matter in the object to be measured, the light will be reflected from the focused point on the inner surface of the inspection pipe. Then, a determination can be made based on the difference in the presence or absence of foreign matter using a detection device similar to that of the above embodiment. Note that the focal point 19 can be any two points.
By emitting ultrasonic waves from two ultrasonic probes 6 at the same time or at different times, it is possible to uniformly focus the focus 19 over the entire area inside the inspection pipe. Therefore, even if this method is used, foreign objects can be detected reliably.

Thus, in the present invention, foreign objects can be detected using ultrasonic waves, but diagnostic apparatuses that utilize ultrasonic waves for diagnosing living bodies, for example, have been known in the past. However, such a device only serves the function of assisting the doctor in making a decision, and the device 2 itself does not make a decision. In contrast, in the present invention, the device itself can determine the presence or absence of a foreign object, and this is largely due to detecting the object to be measured within the pipe. Furthermore, since the foreign object detection device of the present invention is detected inside a pipe, it is possible to incorporate the foreign object detection device of the present invention into a production line for a measurement target.

Although the preferred embodiments of the present invention have been described above, the present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiments and can be modified in various ways. For example, the inspection pipe may have any suitable shape, such as a cylinder, including the position of the inspection section 2. However, in this case, it is necessary to change the arrangement of the array type ultrasonic probe and to change the software.

Effects The foreign matter detection device according to the present invention is configured as described above, and when foreign matter is mixed into a fluid object to be measured such as juice, jam, ham, sausage, etc. during the manufacturing process, how many substances does this foreign matter contain? However, we were able to reliably detect this.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a perspective view of the inspection part of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional explanatory diagram illustrating the detection method of the present invention, FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing the overall configuration of the present invention, and FIG. FIG. 5 is a waveform diagram showing an example of a waveform received by the sonic probe, and is an explanatory diagram illustrating another detection method of the present invention. 1... Inspection pipe 3... Array type ultrasonic probe 4... Sound absorbing material 6... Ultrasonic probe 7.
...Transmission/reception control unit 17...Object to be measured 18...
Foreign matter No. 1, Fig. 2, Fig. 5

Claims (2)

[Claims] (1) An inspection path through which the object to be measured passes, an array-type ultrasonic probe that transmits and receives an ultrasonic beam to the object to be measured from outside the inspection path, and a transmitting and receiving function of the array-type ultrasonic probe. and means for identifying an ultrasonic echo signal reflected from the inspection passage and the object to be measured and an ultrasonic echo signal reflected from a foreign object, and the inspection passage is formed in a pipe shape. A foreign object detection device featuring: (2) The foreign object detection device according to claim 1, wherein the object to be measured is a fluid substance and is allowed to flow into a pipe-shaped inspection passage without any gaps.