Maximise The Flexibility

Many image processing applications depend on varying working distances. As more and more production lines should no longer only operate profitably for mass production but also in small series, the adaptation to new products and therefore varying working distances must be easy and quick to manage. Cameras equipped with liquid lenses focus in milliseconds on various object distances - for millions of cycles, wear-free and without moving parts. With the modular "Active Focus" (AF) board level cameras from IDS and the liquid lens lenses from Edmund Optics (EO), camera applications with variable object distances can now be implemented more easily.

Corning Varioptic liquid lenses are based on the principle of electro-wetting, which means the manipulation of the surface tension of a liquid by an electric field. The resulting possible deformation of a drop of water can be used functionally like an optical lens. Following this principle, the liquid lenses consist of a cell with two non-miscible liquids whose different refractive indices reflect the light at the surface boundary in the same way as a conventional glass lens does. When a voltage of up to 70 V is applied, the ratio of surface tension between the liquids changes, making the radius of the curvature of the spherical surface controllable.

This year EO will present a new series of S-mount (M12) lenses based on Corning Varioptic liquid lenses at the VISION Stuttgart, the international trade show for industrial image processing. The integration of the liquid lens in place of the aperture enables a compact lens design and a small aperture of F/2.4 at all four focal lengths (6 to 16mm). Since the optical design is adapted to the liquid lenses, the product series offers high image quality on large sensor formats of 1/2" or 1/1.8". The optomechanical design supports uncomplicated handling of the lenses. These are screwed in up to the mechanical stop, and focusing between the minimum distance and infinity is then performed via the liquid lens. In addition, the rear lens group is removable so that the user has direct access to the liquid lens. This allows the liquid lens to be rotated 180°, which facilitates electrical connection to the camera.

With the uEye LE USB 3.1 Gen 1 "AF" models, IDS Imaging Development Systems GmbH offers cost-efficient board level cameras with S-mount or CS-/C-mount as focusable variants. The liquid lens control is realised via an additional connector board, which is connected to the digital inputs and outputs of the camera board, which also enables the I2C communication with the liquid lens driver. Due to the complete implementation of Varioptic in the uEye software, the focus of the industrial camera can be easily adjusted via the user interface respectively via the uEye programming interface. The modular camera concept allows both the software and the hardware to be easily expanded for various applications. The user can determine and mount the required liquid lens himself. All lenses based on a Varioptic liquid lens are compatible.