Yes, both Vision Systems Design and Advanced Imaging have extensive coverage of imaging and vision technologies. Other journals with periodic machine vision coverage include Photonics Spectra, Robotics World, Sensors, Quality and Managing Automation.

Yes, two prominent organizations are the Machine Vision Association of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME/MVA) and the Automated Imaging Association (AIA). The premier industry trade shows are the International Robots & Vision Show (June 12-14, 2007 in Chicago, IL), The Vision Show East (June 10-12, 2008 in Boston, MA), Optics East (September 9-12, 2007 in Boston, MA) and Electronic Imaging (January 27-31, 2008 in San Jose, CA).

There have been many significant advances in machine vision in recent years and the technology continues to improve rapidly. The price-performance ratio of current machine vision systems is far superior to those of even a few years ago. Vision Machines is committed to supporting the latest and most powerful technologies in the industry. Some examples of leading-edge technologies we work with include:

-Advanced geometric pattern recognition such as PatMax (Cognex), HexSight (LMI Technologies), and SmARTSearch (DALSA Coreco)
-Color pattern recognition
-Megapixel, progressive-scan, analog and digital, 3-chip color and monochrome cameras (various manufacturers)

Vision Machines is an authorized system integrator for Cognex, DALSA Coreco, HexSight, National Instruments, and Way-2C. We have over 10 years experience developing machine vision applications using Cognex vision platforms, including the 2000, 3000, 5000, 8000, and Checkpoint systems. In addition, we can integrate vision equipment from other manufacturers such as Matrox, ICOS, and XCaliper.

Vision Machines has been involved in many different applications in numerous industries, including inspection systems for food, electronic devices, and the new United States currency. For a partial list of machine vision applications, refer to our Projects page.

Vision Machines offers free evaluations and, in many cases, demos of your machine vision application. The best way to get started is to request our Machine Vision Application Requirements Checklist. Once completed, simply return it to us along with sample parts and/or images, and we will begin our application evaluation. If the application is feasible, we can often demonstrate it over the Internet, using actual part images and suitable vision processing software.

You should consider using machine vision if your inspection task is well-defined and repetitive, and must be fast and highly precise (e.g. requires accurate measurements or decisions). You may wish to stick with human inspectors if your task requires flexible, low-speed, low-precision inspection, or if the task is not well-defined (subjective) or changes frequently. The vast majority of industrial inspection tasks can benefit from machine vision technology.

Machine vision systems provide numerous benefits and can be justified in many ways. Among the many benefits are:

-Greater understanding and control of production process
-Scrap reduction and scrap disposal costs
-Labor and inventory reduction associated with rework
-Avoiding adding value to defective product
-Improving machine uptime
-Capital productivity costs associated with product returns and warranty repairs
-Improved labor utilization associated with production, inspection, and process control
-Improved consistency of the product delivered and customer satisfaction

ROIs for machine vision systems are often measured in months, and the long-term payback will far exceed the initial investment. For more detailed information on the benefits of machine vision, click here.