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New Cameras Offer Image Intelligence
The introduction and proliferation of smart cameras has been the most significant development in the machine vision industry in the past five years. Although continuing advances in pixel resolution, camera interfaces, and computer processing costs and capabilities have all contributed to the growing machine vision market, they are merely enabling technologies. Smart cameras provide an affordable plug-and-play vision system for many manufacturing applications. What exactly do we mean by the...
Photonics Spectra, October 2003
New Solutions for Image Processing
For smart cameras, image isn’t everything. There’s also image processing to consider. Being able to quickly categorize a pill as the right shape or color, for instance, may make the right type of smart camera suitable for pharmaceutical work. To...
Photonics Spectra, October 2003
Polymer Optics Gain Respect
For many years, polymer optics languished as the stepchild of the photonics world. Considered unsuitable for high-precision applications, plastic lenses were relegated to toys, low-accuracy eyepieces and low-end cameras — markets where high volumes,...
Photonics Spectra, October 2003
Pulsed Nd:YAG Lasers Push the Welding Envelope
The growth of industrial welding applications continues to push the welding envelope of lasers in terms of faster speeds, deeper penetration, more-weldable materials and smaller spot sizes. The welding applications emerging from the medical,...
Photonics Spectra, October 2003
Solid-State Lasers Stand Their Manufacturing Ground
For perhaps the first time, conventional Nd:YAG lasers face serious competition from other solid-state technologies in a variety of micro- and macroscale cutting and welding applications.On the cutting front, improvements in beam quality and spot...
Photonics Spectra, October 2003
Tunable Laser Wavelength Calibration for Fiber Sensing
Monitoring the wavelength reflected from a fiber Bragg grating can be achieved using tunable laser technology combined with absolute wavelength referencing. Laser sources are preferred for applications such as overseeing the operating conditions of...
Photonics Spectra, October 2003
Vision Guidance Increases Robots' Utility
Take the robot — basically a blind beast of burden — add vision capability, and you now have an incredibly flexible fixture. It can load machine tools, inspect weld seams on an automobile, distinguish between the palest yellow and white on car doors...
Photonics Spectra, October 2003
Vision Sensors Meet High-Speed Networking
As production line speeds continue to accelerate, manual inspection has given way to automation using machine vision sensors that are faster and more accurate than humans at spotting defects. Many companies have already installed these systems at...
Photonics Spectra, October 2003
Wavelength Monitoring of Sensors: Two Approaches
Fiber sensors offer several significant advantages over conventional electrical sensors. They’re rugged passive components requiring no external power. They form an intrinsic part of the fiber optic cable that transmits the measurement signal,...
Photonics Spectra, October 2003
Frame Grabbers Fine-Tune Machine Vision
Frame grabbers convert video images from cameras into digital format and transfer these digital images to PCs, which use the converted data to make decisions about the objects being inspected. Although performing these functions quickly and reliably...
Photonics Spectra, September 2003
Making Connections: Real-World Telecom Component Production
Today’s telecommunications market requires reliable, low-cost transmitters and receivers. But for the mass deployment of optical connection technology, optical communications technologies must be cost-competitive with existing solutions. To achieve...
Photonics Spectra, September 2003
Multilayer Dielectric Gratings Enable More-Powerful High-Energy Lasers
Over the past 20 years, the use of chirped-pulse amplification has enabled lasers to produce powerful pulses in the femtosecond and picosecond time regime. The development of higher-energy lasers is hampered by a major limiting factor. In...
Photonics Spectra, September 2003
Selecting Lenses to Maximize IR Camera Performance
Many factors must be considered when choosing an infrared lens for a thermal imaging camera. These include knowledge of the technology being used and of the intended application for the imager. It is also essential to have a good idea of what...
Photonics Spectra, September 2003
Solid-State Lasers Are Gunning for Argon-Ion's Place
Frequency-doubled diode lasers that produce blue light at or near 488 nm have emerged over the past couple of years, potentially affecting the multibillion-dollar instrumentation market based on the air-cooled argon-ion laser that has evolved over...
Photonics Spectra, September 2003
VCSELs Go Long-Wave
Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) are now routinely used in photonics applications such as telecommunications, primarily at 850 nm. Their long-wavelength cousins — 1300- and 1550-nm devices — still have some way to go before they...
Photonics Spectra, September 2003
Colorimetry, Anatomical Studies Advance
Color vision has long fascinated scientists, providing topics for research in psychology and physics, as well as in anatomy, physiology and medicine. Substantial information has been gathered over more than 150 years, and with the development of in...
Photonics Spectra, August 2003
Flat Panel Display Metrology Finds More than Meets the Eye
Popularity has its drawbacks, which for the increasingly popular flat panel display industry means that both production efficiency and quality control must be maintained. The two are not always synonymous, however. Ensuring quality requires reliable...
Photonics Spectra, August 2003
Hollow-Core Fibers Seek the 'Holey' Grail
Photonic crystal fibers are glass fibers with a fine array of airholes running down their length. They can exhibit photonic bandgaps, and the more-than-a-decade-old concept of using a two-dimensional bandgap to trap light in a hollow-core fiber is...
Photonics Spectra, August 2003
Laser Technology Targets Microelectronics Defect Detection
Using optical extension techniques, ArF lasers at 193 nm already produce features as small as 0.1 μm on today’s microchips. The challenges will only increase as the industry moves to the 0.07-μm technology node by 2005. While the number...
Photonics Spectra, August 2003
Optical Profiling Applications Expand
Optical profiling (white-light interferometry) is a noncontact technique for determining surface texture and shape, from nanometer-scale roughness through millimeter-scale step heights. The strengths of this method— high speed, a wide measurement...
Photonics Spectra, August 2003
Paintballing with Light
Paintballing techniques are well-established military training tools, but by using laser simulation devices, one can “paintball” with light. To make the training as representative as possible of the dangers to be found on the battleground, the...
Photonics Spectra, August 2003
Adaptive Optics Improves Multiphoton Imaging
In the years since Bio-Rad Laboratories Ltd. of Hemel Hempstead, UK, licensed the right to commercialize multiphoton microscopy systems from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., turnkey multiphoton workstations have appeared in labs worldwide....
Photonics Spectra, July 2003
Automation Adds to the Microscopy Mix
Some researchers are legendary for their lab capability, easily able to find needles in haystacks. Others who complain that they were never good in the lab appreciate simple-to-operate equipment. Although the concept of point-and-shoot microscopy...
Photonics Spectra, July 2003
Electro-Optical Characterization of Organic LEDs
Organic LED displays employ an emerging light-emissive technology for efficiently converting electrons into visible light spectrum photons. Such devices have multiple layers composed of a wide variety of organic materials. In a typical display,...
Photonics Spectra, July 2003
Exploring Failure Probability of High-Power Laser Diodes
For industrial applications, high-power laser diodes must last at least 10,000 hours. This will increase the maintenance-free operation time and thus reduce the total costs of ownership of diode-pumped solid-state lasers compared with...
Photonics Spectra, July 2003
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