Lining up the linescan cameras

I’ve done a few web inspection projects that needed an array of linescan cameras, though I suppose, strictly speaking, it’s a 1D array. In every case, alignment was an absolute PITA . (If you don’t know that acronym, Google it.) So you’ll understand why I read and re-read “Custom Calibration Supports Linescan System Design” on the Vision System design website.

If you use the link I provided, you’ll find a detailed discussion of how two companies worked on a method of simplifying linescan camera alignment. There were two major components of this: a calibration target that produced data for tweaking camera positions, and a five degrees of freedom camera mounting system. If you’re working with multiple linescan cameras, I encourage you to read this very carefully.

You might also notice that the article is dated December 1^st, 2011. I can’t think how I missed it first time around, but I am very pleased Andy Wilson (the Editor of VSD) has taken to providing encore presentations of the most interested articles published. Without that I might have been forever struggling to line up my linescan cameras.