Many manufactured products have irregular shapes; work-pieces with rounded edges, convex or concave outlines, conical shapes. These are often integral design features which must be correctly imaged for quality control purposes.

Problem

Lighting these features properly can be a very difficult task, especially with your camera’s
integrated lighting. This kind of co-axial, direct lighting will perfectly illuminate the top of a work-piece, however, edges will mainly stay in ill-defined shadow. This means that the camera will not receive the contrasts it needs to image the part or product correctly.

Solution

To improve the contrast on the whole shape, get rid of unwanted shadow and allow your machine vision system to operate at maximum efficiency for defect detection, a lighting setup like the following will give you your best solution.

LED Ring light: This provides lighting from the entire circumference, allowing the entire piece to be properly lit at the same time.

Low Angle mount or Diffusion Dome: These offer an ultra-diffuse light to the entire surface, giving great contrast to any relief features.