LMI Technologies (LMI), a 3D scanning and inspection company, has released the Photon Optical Inspection System.

This non-contact system provides surface characterisation of multi-layered, textured, mixed, and a wide range of other precision-manufactured materials. The system is CE and FCC-certified.

Photon leverages LMI’s Line Confocal and Laser Profiler sensor technology to scan material surfaces with submicron precision.

The system uses high-precision encoders, vibration-free movement, and automated stitching software to scan challenging materials–over large fields of view––in a variety of offline and at-line quality inspection applications, as well as laboratory and R&D processes.

Every Photon Optical Inspection System includes a vacuum table, industrial PC (with onboard motion path planning and standard inspection software), display, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and calibration block. Its surface characterisation capabilities include part alignment, automatic feature detection and profile extraction, multi-coordinate measurement, Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T), surface roughness analysis, and more.

Photon can be used to perform surface characterisation and reporting of some of the most difficult applications including:

• Multi-layered cell phone display glass
• Curved-edge cell phone display glass
• Glue bead volume & position (transparent/translucent)
• Medical seal integrity
• PCB-to-chip solder ball/ball grid arrays
• Battery weld seam integrity
• Non-contact surface roughness on practically any material

Len Chamberlain, chief commercial officer, LMI Technologies: “Photon provides manufacturers with a versatile, high-speed scanning system that can be used in a wide variety of offline and at-line quality inspection, lab metrology, and R&D applications, where challenging material surfaces need to be characterised and reported on. And this system comes in at a significantly lower cost than competing technologies such as optical microscopes and CMMs, while still delivering the high-precision measurement results production engineers demand.”