Transducers convert energy from one form to another in order to measure a physical quantity or for information transfer. This broad definition includes microphones, thermometers and position and pressure sensors.
Companies know ISO standards may be good for them, but they may need motivation to get certified. Manufacturing sectors have adopted ISO 9000 for three reasons: the value of the standard, the sales and marketing advantage, and company requirements.
While cost has gone down, machine vision performance has gone up, so says Marcel Singleton, founder and director of business development, The Value Engineering Alliance (Cambridge, MA). “If it can be done by machine vision, it can be done faster and better,” Singleton says.
Vision has come a long way since 1984, when Singleton began working in Analog Devices' industrial automation division's machine vision product groups. A vision system went for $30,000 to $40,000,