The traditional quality detection method for transparent Nonel tubes relies on human vision, which is inefficient and susceptible to subjective factors. Especially for Nonel tubes filled with the explosive, missed defects would lead to potential danger in blasting engineering. The factors affecting the quality of Nonel tubes mainly include the uniformity of explosive filling and the external diameter of Nonel tubes. The existing detection methods, such as Scalar method, Analysis method and infrared detection technology, suffer from the following drawbacks: low detection accuracy, low efficiency and limited detection items. A new quality detection system of Nonel tubes has been developed based on machine vision in order to overcome these drawbacks. Firstly the system architecture for quality detection is presented. Then the detection method of explosive dosage and the relevant criteria are proposed based on mapping relationship between the explosive dosage and the gray value in order to detect the excessive explosive faults, insufficient explosive faults and black spots. Finally an algorithm based on image processing is designed to measure the external diameter of Nonel tubes. The experiments and practical operations in several Nonel tube manufacturers have proved the defect recognition rate of proposed system can surpass 95% at the detection speed of 100m/min, and system performance can meet the quality detection requirements of Nonel tubes. Therefore this quality detection method can save human resources and ensure the quality of Nonel tubes.