Teledyne DALSA is pleased to announce the introduction of Shape Extraction to its Sherlock 7 vision software platform. This feature offers a robust solution to the ever-increasing demands of the machine vision industry. The new Sherlock SE offers a solution for extracting and inspecting features on parts or assemblies based on their 3-dimensional shape. This includes features that are raised, such as embossed characters or features that are impressed or indented, such as stamped and engraved markings.

The Sherlock SE solution combines multi-directional lighting with advanced software algorithms to eliminate surface background effects, such as noise or color, and produces an output image focused on the features most relevant to the inspection. This output image can then be inspected using Sherlock vision tools. Sherlock SE plug-ins extract the 3D surface structure of parts using a process known as “Shape from Shading.” The same process can be used to remove glare from highly reflective parts.