Lighting is one of the most critical aspects of machine vision applications. Failure to properly illuminate a target can result in the loss of information and productivity. A lighting technique involves a light source and its placement with respect to the part and the camera. OdinVision systems offer various combinations of external and integrated lighting options based on the environment and application.

Types of Machine Vision Lighting Sources

Choosing the right machine vision lighting source is critical to the success of the application. There are four prominent types of illumination sources or types for machine vision lighting, which are the following:

• LED illumination

The LED sources, owing to their wide range of benefits and high popularity, occupy a position above the other types of sources. Its vast range of benefits includes a longer life expectancy, mechanical resilience, durability, easy-to-control facilities, and miniature physical size. Since LED sources bring down the operational costs significantly, they are considered excellent value for money lighting sources. Its light color is not only limited to white but can also be red, green, blue, and even infrared and ultraviolet. LED products are ideal for lighting small products.

• Laser illumination

Laser lights represent high-intensity and focusable beams that can be imaged quite precisely, even over longer distances. The combination of lasers and image processing is used in a wide variety of operations like optical inspection of electronic components.

• Halogen lamps

A halogen lamp is typically a point source in combination with a reflector. It is preferred in industrial image processing when the areas to be illuminated are large like vehicle bodies, etc., or where a lot of light is required. These are not quite prevalent because they have high energy consumption, heat generation, and infrared emissions.

• Fluorescent lamps

Also known as ‘Neon light’, they are based on the concept of discharge tubes. These too, are used quite rarely, to illuminate large areas in industrial machine vision applications. They should always be used with an electronic ballast, to avoid flickering effects in images.

Common Lighting Techniques:

Visual guidance and alignment is a widespread problem in the application field of industrial manipulator. Therefore, our company carried out corresponding dynamic alignment training courses for it this time.