MUNICH, GERMANY-This year, MVTec Software GmbH commemorates its 10-year anniversary. MVTec is a developer and manufacturer of standard software for machine vision that is used worldwide.

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, CA-Endevco Corp., a designer, manufacturer and supplier of mission-critical sensor instrumentation to the military and defense community, announces the delivery of the first ship set of sensors for the F-35 Lightning II flight test program to Lockheed Martin (Ft. Worth, TX).

Until recently, PC systems were predominantly used for machine vision applications, but now intelligent cameras are used in increasing numbers.

Over the years, machine vision has become an important tool for quality analysis. As a technology, it is well-suited for on-line improvement of the manufacturing process. Yet machine vision is not as ubiquitous on the plant floor as might be imagined.

While cost has gone down, machine vision performance has gone up, so says Marcel Singleton, founder and director of business development, The Value Engineering Alliance (Cambridge, MA). “If it can be done by machine vision, it can be done faster and better,” Singleton says.

BIC New Zealand Ltd. (Auckland, New Zealand), one of a number of BIC Corp. (Milford, CT) subsidiaries around the globe, manufactures about 15 million felt-tip pens each year using a customized automated assembly machine. These pens are then sold throughout New Zealand, Mexico, Chile, Canada and the United States.

Welcome to this inaugural Vision & Sensors special section from Quality Magazine. This has been a project in the planning for quite some time and it is with great pleasure we offer you this first in a regular series of special issues on this fast-growing technology.

Today’s microscopes have more capabilities and features to meet manufacturing demands.