NVision Expands Detroit Office

By Sara Ferris

NVision (Southlake, TX) is expanding its Detroit-area office in Wixom,MI, to meet demand for its MAXOS high-speed, noncontact inspection system. The company will also expand its contract reverse-engineering and inspection services.

The MAXOS system is designed for automated high-speed production inspection of polished and unpolished bare metal, plastics, and glass. A noncontact probe measures individual points with a single light spot, thus eliminating the inaccuracies of a physical contact probe, particularly when measuring objects with very small radii or extremely sharp edges. It can scan polished parts, even mirrored and lapped surfaces, without having to coat them, as is required with laser scanning.

The MAXOS scanner provides accuracy of +/- 2 micrometers on matte surfaces and +/- 10 micrometers on polished metal. It can achieve a point spacing resolution of 0.2 micrometers without pausing. Additionally, since the MAXOS has no ball probe and is not limited by ball-offset geometry, it can inspect radii of less than 0.1 mm.

"The MAXOS solution provides a substantially higher level of accuracy and inspection speed than coordinate measurement machines (CMMs)," said Steve Kersen, president of NVision, noting that its measurement speed is not limited by the need to make physical contact with each point that is measured.

The MAXOS collects individual points at a rate of 100 per second and uses up to 7 axes. All axes can be controlled to ensure smooth and fast movement even on difficult-to-measure horizontal geometry and blade platforms.