The Shelton webSPECTOR®, surface inspection and shadeSPECTOR™, fabric colour checking family of machine vision products can perform a wide range of surface and colour inspection tasks. Six years in development, the systems are the most accurate and consistent available today. Using the latest technology, our systems provide previously unobtainable performance. They can be supplied stand-alone or integrated with your existing processes.
The webSPECTOR is scalable in web speed and width, resolution, and number of lighting configurations. Every application is different, so we custom-engineer a solution which is scaled to suit the mechanical size and resolution of the task being undertaken. The modular design enables a number of different camera planes to be integrated into the one vision system. A central PC system co-ordinates the overall vision system so that all of the cameras are started and stopped together, ensuring that information from each plane is collected and analysed together.
Our design philosophy has led to the open modular architecture we deploy. The system can be built to speeds of between 5 to 600m/min, and resolutions of between 0.05mm to 5mm per pixel.
Tasks requiring increased functionality such as database management, defect libraries and wider web widths are included in the webSPECTOR® Plus system. Defect examples can be stored to a database system, to assist in grading and classification.

The webSPECTOR‘s unique and powerful automatic training and web-recording systems, a patent-protected feature, massively enhance the inspection accuracy and set-up efficiency.
Shelton Vision’s newest product, shadeSPECTOR™, is the result of several years of innovative research in conjunction with Loughborough University’s Department of Mechatronics. Originally developed to measure colour variation in printed wall coverings, shadeSPECTOR has been adapted to measure and check fabric surface colour and detects shade variation to better than 1 delta E *.

Colour is measured at three points across the width of the fabric and at intervals along the length. The variation in colour is recorded and shown graphically. This is achieved by using a fibre-optic spectrophotometer connected to a camera. The fabric is illuminated by a high-energy, Xenon stroboscope.