Picking a machine vision system

How do you decide which of the many smart camera systems on the market is the right one for you? Well Janice Hardrath, CTO of Censis, decided to use the ‘Chili Cookoff’ approach. As reported in Medical Design Technology, Censis were developing a 2D datamatrix code marking and reading system for surgical instruments and needed to find the ‘best’ code reader. (Here’s a link to their Censitrac® Instrument Manager product with some good images of the codes that had to be read.)

After setting up a direct comparison test of three competing systems, (what Janice called the “scan-off competition,”) she decided that the Cognex DataMan 7500 was the best tool for the job.

Three interesting points to take away from this article:

1. Select a system by testing competing products on the actual task.
2. Take in to account the reactions of the people who will actually be using the equipment.
3. The lighting integrated into the DataMan 7500 was able to deal with curved, highly reflective surfaces – not an insignificant achievement.

Food for thought next time you need to select a vision system.