Machine vision is rapidly being deployed throughout manufacturing industry, most noticeably in the areas of part detection and quality inspection. Recent advances in this technology has greatly improved the performance and speed of image analysis, while at the same time reducing costs.

Machine vision is now considered a viable option for on-line continuous inspection in many processes, and an essential one in areas of critical quality inspection.

Our considerable experience in this area allows us to advise solutions for many detection and inspection requirements. Our long experience in industrial control systems has ensured that our solutions are both effective and most importantly rugged.

The need for rugged vision solutions

All too often vision systems can almost do the job. The biggest provisions usually being that everything is correct, i.e. the lighting is just perfect, the sun is not shining, and nobody is looking over the machine. Then the system will work.

However with such systems any minor variation in the environment, or even acceptable variation in the product, can cause a commissioned system to become erratic.

This scenario will be familiar to many who have experienced machine vision systems. Maybe it's older, less sophisticated vision technology, maybe it's poor engineering, or whatever.

The major issue is that vision systems, when installed in the production process, must be reliable and repeatable. They must have an ability to continue functioning if the ideal image of the product deteriorates.

Our range of lighting solutions include

• Fibre-Optics (Focussed Light,Back Light, Structured, etc.)
• High Frequency LED
• Infra-red UV
• Strobes
• Structured Lighting
• On-Axis Lighting
• Polarisers
• Colour emphasis

The image is important

Before you can analyse an image, you must first get a good image to analyse. This somewhat obvious statement is missed by many.

Westmont Systems continues to invest in machine vision technologies and in training and the acquisition of specialist staff. We offer a dedicated laboratory facility located at our Edinburgh office. Here Westmont Systems' machine vision application engineers concentrate on obtaining the ideal image solutions for a specific problem.

We approach any problem through a process of considering best part illumination and lensing.

Lenses are also very important, and we hold a wide range. From basic CCTV type lenses to specialist lenses, such as telecentric, a

Vision applications

We can supply machine vision for a wide range of problems

• Defect Detection
• Print Quality Verification
• Character Verification / Recognition
• Robot Guidance
• Non contact measurement
• Foreign Object detection