| Cutting Tool Gauge
Precise edges are critical in cutting tools. Typically the measurement of the working edge of a cutting tool is done in a backlighting mode. To achieve the precise measurments needed to perform this gauging task a highly uniform backlight is needed. The goal is to elimante any background noise that may be mistakenly detected as the edge of the tool. In addition the space constaints put limitations on the size of the lighting device.
After working with the customer to determine the available envelope it was deteremined that the best soultion would be an LED device. However LED's have a very non-uniform output pattern. To correct the problem we investigated optical techniques that would provide the neccessary uniformity in a small package. The resultant device came to be known as the lipstick collimator due to its resemblence to a common liptick tube and describing the method of providing a high uniform projected spot to provide the crisp, high contrast image needed to complete the inspection task.
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