Customer Profile: Steinbichler Optotechnik

Based in Germany with a U.S. office in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Steinbichler Optotechnik GmbH is a worldwide supplier of optical measuring and sensor technology. The company’s 3D inspection software systems are deployed primarily in Germany and the United States by well-known industrial companies and research institutes, such as Airbus, BMW, Boeing, Bridgestone, Ford, Hitachi, Michelin, Panasonic and Toyota, with an emphasis serving the automotive industry.

The company’s technology is used for a wide variety of applications including 3D digitizing; surface inspection; tire testing; quality control/inspection; mold and tool making; rapid prototyping; reverse engineering; shearography and deformation; and vibration analysis.

The Steinbichler COMETinspect 3D inspection system is used to detect inaccuracies in parts on production lines, enabling the machine operator to correct the press machine or robot program to assure quality in produced parts. COMETinspect is also used by inspection service companies who evaluate a part against the tolerance description, reporting back on deviations. The measurement results give the user valuable basic information for a wide application range, for example, to correct tool settings or to pinpoint wear and tear areas on a tool that may require reconditioning.

COMETinspect’s comprehensive comparison methods (e.g., surface comparison with user-selectable false-color plots, comparison of sections and borderlines with needle diagram) provide a highly efficient tool for quality control. On the market since 2003, COMETinspect had been importing 3D models from CAD programs using a variety of translation technologies such as Open Cascade and Datakit.

Customers select COMETinspect over competitive offerings because the company has designed very complex software to be operated very easily by users without in-depth knowledge, making it much faster to complete inspections.

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