Inspection equipment for small bottles

Claim 1

Inspection equipment for inspecting cylindrical products such as phials for appearance, dimension and defects comprising: an indexing turn tale mounted for turning intermittently in one direction and having plurality of pedestals for placing the products to be inspected arranged at predetermined intervals along the outer peripheral edge of the table; a disk turn table arranged concentrically on the indexing turn table, turning on the same axis and mounted for causing the products on the pedestals to rotate on their own axes by contacting the outer peripheral surface of the disk turn table with the peripheral surface of the product near the bottom thereof; a pair of rollers spaced from each other and positioned on both sides of said pedestals and on the outside of said disk turn table, for holding said products placed on the pedestals of said indexing turn table and having the outer peripheral surface of the rollers contacted with the peripheral surface of the products near the bottom thereof; a star wheel partly overlapping said indexing turn table and interlocked with the intermittent turn of the indexing turn table to supply said products to the indexing turn table at a first crossing area with the indexing turn table and to recover the products from the indexing turn table a second crossing area between the star wheel and the indexing turn table; a plurality of lighting devices arranged along the periphery of siad indexing turn table for each stop position of siad pedestals associated with the intermittent turn of the indexing turn table and for lighting the surface to be inspected of said products placed on the pedestals; a plurality of imaging devices for imaging each surface to be inspected of siad product slighted by these lighting devices so as to output image signals from the imaging devices; an image processing device for processing the image signals outputted from the imaging devices to generate a defective signal associated with siad products; and a sorting device placed near said star wheel and for responding to said defective signals amount the products recovered by the star wheel to sort out defective products.