St. Louis company introduces DVT camera service to area

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Kraft Foods, two other local manufacturers and FAG Bearings in Joplin have joined the ranks of Ford Motor Company, Lear Corporation, Motorola, IBM, Wrigley and Proctor & Gamble in using the DVT camera in their plants. |ret||ret||tab|

The DVT camera is a programmable high-tech, high-resolution sensor camera primarily used for quality-control inspections and measurements, as well as pick-and-place operations using robotics.|ret||ret||tab|

"FAG Bearings is using the camera to inspect the diameters and the amount of grease in the bearings for Windstar vans, as well as the bearings that go in the front end of Jeep Cherokees. Kraft is using the camera to inspect cheese before it goes out the door," said Howard Nordyke, local sales representative for St. Louis-based House of Tools Engineering Technologies, which is the Missouri distributor of the DVT camera. |ret||ret||tab|

The camera has "accept" or "reject" lights that flash during inspections, he said. |ret||ret||tab|

Innovative Controls Engineering in Marshfield installs the cameras for companies in the area.|ret||ret||tab|

"Quality-control and measuring make up about 60 percent to 70 percent of the camera's use. They are also used with robotics systems for pick-and-place and to visualize machine parts in hazardous areas," Innovative Controls Engineer Mike Kleeman said. "They're pretty versatile." |ret||ret||tab|

HTE has distributed the DVT camera in Missouri for about five years, targeting Springfield's industrial market for the last eight months, according to Nordyke. |ret||ret||tab|

Nordyke conducts both on-site and off-site training seminars for companies interested in purchasing the camera, which was developed at Georgia Institute of Technology. |ret||ret||tab|

The engineers who developed the camera went on to form their own company, DVT, in 1991.|ret||ret||tab|

"There's a lot of interest so far ... we're not just looking at a camera here. This is actually a computer that can be plugged into a monitor. It has all the reasoning capabilities to decide if a part is good and passes inspection. It can do math and measure the diameter of a hole," Nordyke said. |ret||ret||tab|

The camera, which is digital, uses light and solar panels to obtain information from an object, which then appears on a monitor or can be stored in the camera's computer, which has a PowerPC processor and TCP/IP Ethernet capability. Its software is Windows-based and is free and can be upgraded from DVT's Web site, Kleeman said. |ret||ret||tab|

Depending on the model, the cameras cost between $3,000-$6,000, Nordyke said. He said when the first DVT camera was introduced in 1991, it sold for about $20,000.|ret||ret||tab|

The camera's slow migration to southwest Missouri is due to the fact that it only in recent years has been picked up by a distributor, according to HTE Sales Manager Marvin Dixon. |ret||ret||tab|

"Now DVT has a distribution network that's set up not only through North America, but throughout the world. Also, whenever a new product is introduced, especially a new high-tech product, it has to undergo the test of time to have widespread acceptance," Dixon said. |bold_on||bold_on||ret||ret||tab|

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