Real-Time Quality Control in Thin Glass Forming Using Infrared Thermography and Deep Learning

Towards the growing trends in lightweight, flexible, and optical advantages, thin glasses become key components in numerous applications such as consumer electronics like foldable smartphones, or automotive interiors. Nonisothermal glass molding promises a viable technology for the cost-efficient production of precision glass components. In the existing production, the quality of the glass products can only be accessed at the end of the hot forming process. Due to high rates of product failures often appeared in the precision glass molding processes, the current quality control of the produced optical products suffers low process efficiency. This work introduces an enabling approach for monitoring the product quality in real-time using thermography and machine learning. Specifically, the acquisition of the temperature fields of the glass components during the hot forming stage enabled by an infrared thermographic camera allows machine learning to predict the final shape of the molded components at the end of the forming process. Several transfer learning models have been investigated to demonstrate the proposed method. To further enhance the prediction performance, self-built convolutional neural network models were developed using different types of image data. By incorporating the time-series image data as an input to the learning models, the prediction performance was achieved. The model built in the present work demonstrates an excellent prediction accuracy where the difference between the measured and predicted shapes of the glass products can be kept at low double-digit micrometers. Such accuracy achieved by our self-developed machine learning model promisingly satisfy the quality control in serial productions of numerous precision optical glass components in automotive and consumer electronics sectors.