Where reflexes go to die

In a recent investment, Optronic has increased their distance measurement capabilities in Skellefteå. The unit is effectively a fully equipped room, designed to omit zero reflexes, and increases the company’s flexibility in both development and manufacturing.

”The room is totally black and every object that can cause reflexes, including radiators and pipes, has been painted black or covered in a black rubber cloth,” says deputy managing director Joacim Lindström. ”We’ve made sure to do this thoroughly, and that the unit holds the high standard we require.”

”Reflexes can really mess up and slow down calibration.”

In the room, distance as well as temperature measurements are done for different products. For example, when testing Fotonic cameras, the room is used to calibrate the Z-distance measurements and temperature drift for each individual pixel in the camera.

”It’s a great unit for any type of time-of-flight-based technology really,” says Lindström. ”Many of our customers are benefitting from this.

With optical sensors, there are many factors involved that can affect a measurement. A time-of-flight camera may have to handle different lighting conditions, sunlight, rain, fog and a wide range of temperatures. That can seriously affect the reliability of the measurement.

”Fotonic cameras are built to handle those types of challenges,” says Lindström. ”This setup alongside our production setup helps us reduce time to test and implement improved calibration software and both testing and development can be done with no interruption in production. This is a great help in development projects.”

For Optronic an important benefit is also the possibility to further increase the efficiency in production.

”This gives us the opportunity where we can produce and calibrate in parallel to a higher degree when needed. So that’s a bottleneck we’re getting rid of and that will shorten leadtime.”