Playing in the 3D space

With several 3D inspection projects under my belt, here’s something I think I’m qualified to write about: new 3D camera products from Keyence and Cognex.

Keyence emailed a few days ago to tell me about their LJ-V7000 Series 3D scanner. I couldn’t find it on their page, but I was able to look through the product brochure. Their claim to fame is that it’s fast, but what interested me more is that it appears very precise.

This precision stems from an interesting, and in my opinion very sensible, design decision. They are using a blue laser. Now that means they suffer less diffraction effects than does someone using a red laser, like say Cognex.

Cognex jumped into 3D with the DS1000 unit. Otherwise very similar to the Keyence product, this looks very easy to set up and use, though I haven’t tried it myself. It’s also not massively expensive, but perhaps that depends on what you expect.

Clearly these two 3D products have their strengths and weaknesses. I look forward to trying them both.