We are pleased to introduce our new partner, VICO Imaging, a global leader in industrial machine vision solutions.
The company was launched in 2008, at a time of global boom in automated manufacturing, driven by the smartphone revolution. VICO Imaging is the exclusive international distributor of COOLENS and they work closely together in R&D at their industrial park in Huizhou. VICO Imaging has served more than 5,600 customers worldwide, developed more than 8,500 products and sold more than 1.8 million lens units. Their innovative design enables their lenses to be part of the most advanced semiconductor packaging technologies such as CoWoS.
VICO Imaging is committed to providing high quality products and outstanding customer support, contributing to the development of the global machine vision industry. As the industry evolves, machine vision plays a vital role in product inspection, automation and scientific research. Thanks to VICO Imaging lenses, these applications have never been more precise and reliable. In this blog post, we detail the different types of lenses offered by VICO Imaging, including bi-telecentric, telecentric and fixed focal length lenses.
Telecentric and Bi- Telecentric lenses
Telecentric lenses are designed primarily to correct the parallax error that occurs with conventional lenses. These lenses can be used within a given object distance, so that the magnification of the resulting image does not vary with the distance of the object. This is particularly important when the object to be measured is not on the same surface.
Compared to fixed focal length or zoom lenses, telecentric lenses require a more complex design and usually require more optical elements to achieve telecentricity. Due to the precise arrangement of optical elements and high quality manufacturing, telecentric lenses have higher production costs. In addition, these lenses are usually larger and heavier due to their complex design.
Telecentric lenses have three main advantages:
Constant magnification: a key feature of telecentric lenses is their ability to maintain a constant magnification, which is essential in applications where precision is essential.
Reduced perspective error: these lenses significantly minimise perspective distortion, a common problem with fixed focus lenses, especially when looking at objects of different sizes or at different distances.
Greater depth of field: telecentric lenses provide a wider depth of field than fixed focus lenses, allowing sharper imaging over a wider range of distances.
Telecentric lenses are used in industrial automation, metrology, robotics, medical imaging, electronics, semiconductors, packaging and scientific research where precise, distortion-free imaging and measurement is required.
Fixed focal length lenses
These are the most common lens types used in machine vision. If a lens has a single focal length (for example 30 mm), it is usually a fixed focal length lens. These lenses can focus to multiple working distances, which is usually achieved by moving all the optical elements together while keeping the distance between the elements constant.
Fixed focal length lenses are ideal for most machine vision applications as they are flexible and offer high performance.
They can be used for tasks such as:
- testing of general components
- barcode scanning
- biometric and document scanning
- reading the number plate
- optical character recognition (OCR) and optical character verification (OCV)
The field of view (AFOV) of a fixed focal length lens is determined by the focal length and the size of the sensor. As the focal length decreases, the field of view increases. This relationship is linear, so a 50 mm lens will have twice the field of view of a 100 mm lens.
These lenses can be considered in this context as variable magnification lenses, as they can be focused to different distances and thus have different magnifications.
In summary, VICO Imaging is not only a major player in machine vision technology, but also at the forefront of innovative solutions for industrial automation and measurement.
The use of telecentric and fixed focal length lenses contributes to the accuracy and reliability of manufacturing processes in many industries, be it robotics, semiconductor or packaging. Our partnership with VICO Imaging enables us to provide our customers with the latest technological solutions. Together with our partners, we look forward to evolving even further along this path and helping to shape the industry of the future.
