SWIR Cameras
SWIR is what those in the business would call Short Wave InfraRed. It is more often than not referring to the wavelength band of light that sits between 900nm and 2500nm. Unlike Long-Wave Infrared light, which is emitted from the object itself, SWIR light is similar to visible light in that photons are reflected or absorbed by an object, giving you the strongest contrast possible. A LWIR camera produces lower quality images, while a SWIR camera produces stunning HD images.
Short Wave InfraRed Imagers
Many applications use SWIR imagers. Some of these may be including silicon inspection, laser beam profiling, hyperspectral imaging, chemical and plastics sensing, machine vision imaging, agricultural sensing, surveillance systems, and medical imaging. They give you the ability to see those super minute defects that you just can’t catch otherwise, and in some circumstances that’s the difference between life and death. In today’s age, SWIR is used in autonomous cars and phone face ID, just to name a couple applications.
Machine Vision Imaging
Machine vision imaging is probably the heaviest used application for SWIR right now. Machine vision imaging necessitates cameras that can see the absolute smallest defects, see that at extremely fast frame rates, and a field of view wide enough to image a large area. SWIR cameras fit in with most vision softwares Manufacturing anything always has some unknown and risk to it. There are just so many steps involved in most manufacturing processes, there’s always a chance for something to wrong and lead to you putting out faulty products.
NIR Cameras
NIR is what we refer to as Near InfraRed. It is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum directly adjacent to the visible range, meaning it is not visible to the human eye. NIR-optimized industrial cameras are popular for applications that need to utilize this wavelength range, mainly applications with poor light conditions, which could be anything like security cameras or the traffic cameras that monitor traffic flow. Until now, these applications were only possible with infrared cameras with expensive CCD sensors. Some application fields and inspection solutions require NIR for high wavelengths as well as for normal lighting, to record high-contrast images. Standard industrial cameras quickly reach their limits in that particular scenario, since they require very great lighting to get useable images.