Yet another high speed application

Here’s an interesting application, courtesy of Allied Vision Technologies: imaging ink jet droplets in flight. The system, christened “Jetxpert” and developed by ImageXpert of Nashua, New Hampshire, uses AVT’s Stingray cameras to analyze droplet size and trajectory, which are pretty darned important parameters for an inkjet cartridge.

The Stingray cameras themselves are a rather nice family of 1394b products. They’re based around Sony color and monochrome CCD sensors with resolutions from VGA to 5 Mp. Take a look at the range here.

Good use of machine vision

Here’s an interesting vision application snippet, culled from the Sept ’09 Assembly Magazine: “Machine Vision Verifies Connector Assembly”. The story describes how “Dial-X Automated Equipment” use smart cameras and sensors from Banner to check part presence, detect defects, perform color verification and so on.

As you might recall, I’m a fan of the Banner product line, because they’re inexpensive and very easy to use. In fact I’d argue their software has the shortest learning curve of any machine vision software. Check out their smart camera range.