Alliance Formed to Develop Lighting Solutions for Machine Vision

CCS Inc., a manufacturer of inspection lighting, and iCore, a producer of lighting components, have formed a business alliance to jointly develop new products for high-speed automated inspection.

In addition to lighting, CCS (Kyoto, Japan; https://www.ccs-grp.com) also sells other products for inspection, such as cameras and lenses, while iCore (Anyang, Korea; https://icorecorp.com/) sells light controllers, particularly those used in high-speed imaging applications.  

The companies have not yet determined what specific products they will work on jointly but plan to decide soon. “These will be publicly announced accordingly,” says Sayoko Takahashi, spokesperson for CCS.

Recently, CCS has been focusing on lighting solutions used in high-speed inspection methods, particularly for electronic components and semiconductors, says Takahashi.

One such method is multi-scan imaging, which involves capturing multiple images at the same time with different high-speed lighting conditions.

Multi-scan imaging allows manufacturers to automate inspection processes that are usually done manually, such checking for laser markings on curved surfaces or scratches or dents on printed surfaces. Manual inspection "has been a major issue for our customers” because it is inherently inefficient, Takahashi says.

Choul Woo Park, CEO of iCore, sums up the partnership by saying, “We want to maximize the performance of CCS lighting through iCore's strobe controller and continue to provide the solutions that our customers want."

In addition to semiconductors and electronic components, other products that could be inspected in this manner include automobile parts and building an construction materials, Takahashi explains.