Manufacturer & distributor of standard & custom vision testing equipment & visual inspection instruments including optical comparators. Provides 2D manual & motorized microscopes in 0.2-7x magnification for visual inspection, assembly verification, cosmetic surface inspection & non-contact color inspection. Serves automotive, medical & aerospace industries.
Vision/Multi-Sensor measuring systems are faster and more versatile than profile projectors and CMMs when it comes to precision 2D measurement. Using double telecentric optics and sub-pixel edge detection software, these systems can achieve fast dimensional measurements with one click of the mouse.
Optical Comparators
There’s no doubt that optical comparators have an important role to play. They’re ideal for flat components and stampings, but they also excel at round parts like turned or pressed parts and complex features such as a spline, which is a series of multiple radii blended together.
Unlike many vision measurement systems that use software to analyze an image, traditional optical comparators rely on silhouette measurement and point comparison to obtain accurate measurements. To do this, a part is placed on the stage of the comparator and the user moves the stage to match the silhouette of the part with prescribed plan points on the screen.
While some have predicted the demise of optical comparators, Beauchemin believes that customers will continue to demand intuitive equipment with easy-to-use interfaces. Whether that’s shadow graph comparators or all-digital ones such as VisionGauge, newer generations of engineers will expect simple to use tools that require little training to operate.
Optical Inspection Systems
Optical inspection systems are designed to automatically check for flaws and errors. They typically feature a camera that is capable of operating in either area scan or line scan mode and are available as an independent inspection station or as part of a turnkey system.
These systems can be used to inspect a wide variety of products, including printed circuit boards (PCBs) and medical devices. They can help manufacturers reduce the number of rejects and rework needed for production lines by conducting up to 100% inspection of parts.
Optical inspection systems can also be used in a range of other industries, such as power and energy to monitor laser-drilled or electrical discharge matching (EDM) holes or to check for threading errors. For these applications, it is important that a vision inspection system be precalibrated to convert pixel measurements to real world measurements. This can be done by mapping pixel coordinates back to units of measurement that can be understood and interpreted by quality engineers.
Optical Microscopes
Optical microscopes use two mirrors and lenses to split light reflected off the test surface into different paths for measurement. When the resulting images are recombined, optical interference creates dark and light bands of contours that are a direct function of the areal topography features present on the sample surface. These contours are recorded by the instrument’s digital camera and onboard software is used to calculate a 3-D surface map.
While optical microscopy has existed since the 17th century, it was only recently that technology developed to allow for large magnification. This was made possible by improvements in mirrors and optical components.
Optical systems with CMOS or charge-couple device (CCD) cameras deliver high scan rates, enabling measurements of hundreds of thousands or even millions of pixels in a few seconds. This allows the system to measure a wide range of lateral resolutions and surface roughness characteristics. The limiting factor is the natural diffraction of light, which limits the maximum resolvable feature size.
Visual Inspection Systems
Often called the production line’s eyes, visual inspection systems use cutting edge computer vision technology to inspect products for deformities and other issues that could lead to parts that don’t work as designed. This type of quality control is a valuable tool for manufacturing companies and other non-manufacturing businesses that produce items of higher precision.
Computer software built into these systems will instantly analyze images or data captured during any outlined process and assess a product’s performance in a pass/fail capacity, allowing manufacturers to detect errors or defects quicker and more accurately. They can also help to identify inefficient or ineffective processes and make corrections before unacceptable products reach consumers.
KEYENCE’s robust vision system lineup includes both 2D and 3D cameras, lighting and processing capabilities to tailor and optimize inline inspections for any application. Pre-processing operations remove noise, highlight wanted features and perform other actions that enable measurements, counting, positioning, OCR/code reading and defect detection.
