Speed, format, surface, inspection type, environment — five dimensions map your station to the right sensor, interface and lighting
Coating inline inspection (300–1500 mm web, 30–100 m/min) uses line scan with encoder sync; cell appearance uses 5–20 MP area scan; tab welding needs large-format high resolution with high-magnification FA optics.
Connector pin inspection (0.01–0.03 mm) needs telecentric optics with high-res mono; cover-glass defects need large-format 20 MP with multi-angle lighting; module alignment reaches 5 µm-class accuracy.
Post-placement AOI is one of the few defaults-to-color cases (component color codes, polarity, solder tint); 5–12 MP with GigE/USB3 is sufficient; DPM codes need dedicated low-angle lighting.
Wafer surface defects, wire bonding and die placement: high-magnification or telecentric optics with large-format mono, coaxial lighting dominant; SWIR sees inside silicon wafers.
Web register and color (100–300 m/min) uses line scan with linear lighting; single labels use high-frame-rate area scan with strobe; exposure often compresses to 20–50 µs, making strobe mandatory.
Fill level, cap presence and inkjet OCR: modest accuracy but extreme speed (200–1200 containers/min) — low/mid resolution with high frame rate, global shutter and strobe is the standard recipe. Backlight for fill level.
Blister presence and damage usually in color (pill color separation); vial contaminants need high-contrast lighting plus rotation; 5 MP is typically sufficient, speed pushes frame rate; image archival and audit trail supported.
Fabric defects (broken yarn, holes, oil stains, color deviation) go almost entirely to line scan, multi-camera stitching for 1600–3600 mm webs; dark fabrics reflect little, so lighting power must double; overlap calibration is the hard part.
Waybill OCR, multi-face barcodes and DWS dimensioning: mid-resolution high-frame-rate mono; parcel height spread demands depth of field across the full range — the most common failure point; bandwidth often requires 10GigE.
Dimensional measurement requires telecentric optics with backlight (the most stable silhouette method); polished metal needs dome or polarized light; DPM dot-peened codes demand 100% read rates with dedicated diffuse lighting.
Transparent-material inspection is decided by the optical path, not the camera — we say so openly. Bright field sees internal defects, dark field sees surface defects; usually both, with multi-camera stitching for wide webs.
Ripeness and color grading make color cameras mandatory; products roll at extreme rates (tens of thousands per hour) needing multi-camera multi-angle setups; internal quality (sugar, browning) requires SWIR — visible light cannot do it.
Field of view, accuracy, cycle time — we return a sensor, interface and lighting recommendation
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