Pioneering surface inspection solution.

Ametek Surface Vision is continuing to evolve its highly successful SmartView® surface inspection solution, greatly enhancing production capabilities for manufacturers globally with significant software improvements.

SmartView’s superior performance in detecting surface flaws and defects has enabled it to maintain its position as a market-leading materials inspection solution for three decades. Key to this dominance is the modular system design, supported by an ongoing program of updates that ensures SmartView remains at the forefront of inspection technology.

The SmartView system combines powerful software, state-of-the-art camera technology, high-intensity lighting and unparalleled application engineering services, to deliver a high-performance, automated solution that detects, classifies and visualizes surface defects, and ensures that the highest quality standards are maintained. Existing hardware can be easily switched out to meet the latest technological developments, and Ametek Surface Vision ensures its Windows-based software suite keeps pace, seamlessly integrating into existing systems.

Shean McMahon, Vice President of Research & Development, Ametek Surface Vision, explained: “We realize that real-time control of the manufacturing process is critical to our customers, so this remains key to our system’s performance. 2019 is shaping up to be an exciting year for Surface Vision as we embark on the road to expanding our core technologies.

“We expect the combined impact of new capabilities, novel product designs, and optimizations, all borne out of our significant industry experience, will deliver a paradigm shift in the surface inspection industry and serve up unprecedented value, flexibility, and inspection results to our current and future customers.

“SmartView’s latest design enhancements are immediately visible, making highly detailed surface inspection capabilities achievable, ensuring a long system life without requiring a costly system redesign. These significant upgrades, already available to SmartView users, include a refreshed, more intuitive user interface, parts-per-million data calculations, and developments to SmartView’s ability to detect defects and parallel classification capabilities – and this is just the beginning of our 2019 development program.”

Introduced in the latest upgrade is the Synchronized Web Viewer, which allows multiple views to be displayed simultaneously. It provides the user with total control of the interface, which could help reduce scrap product in the event of a process issue. This enables different process views, or the same view with a variety of queries in grading, using intuitive drop-down menus and customizable windows to help narrow down results with precision.

SmartView’s new Parts Per Million (PPM) application expresses the defect area as a ratio of the total product area. This real-time calculation provides easy visualization of defect density in table and graph formats, making it simpler to identify regions that need closer review.

A number of new processing modes have been added and optimized in SmartView for specific inspection requirements, such as detecting quiet areas on coated products, removal of defects that match a target shape, enhanced repeating defect algorithms, and more.
Classification testing without process interruption

A new Parallel Classification function enables SmartView to run up to four alternate classifiers on an inspection file, enabling seasonal or test classifiers to operate alongside established classifiers. This allows potential changes to be evaluated without interrupting current production inspection.

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