Learn about machine-vision lighting

Steve Scheiber, Contributing Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 4/22/2008 12:13:00 PM

Increasing machine-vision resolution to inspect ever smaller circuit features triggers the need for increased frame rates to maintain production throughput. Higher frame rates, in turn, require decreased exposure times. Capturing images of sufficient quality with shorter exposures demands adequate lighting of the objects under inspection.

To help you illuminate your products properly, National Instruments has posted three tutorials to its Web site that cover the topic of lighting in machine-vision systems. The first article in the series, which was written by Daryl Martin of Advanced Illumination, introduces the basic concepts and theories of inspection lighting. It provides information about the types of lighting available and the optimum arrangement of lighting sources.

The other two articles in this series (which actually appeared on the Web site first) explore various lighting techniques and describe how to design an efficient lighting system.

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