A cheap, fast, and versatile illumination system for technical cleanliness

Many production and assembly processes in industry are subjected to particulate contamination, that could massively affect the product’s function. The detection of the particles could be a challenging task. Especially curved surfaces place high demands on the illumination system which can either be met with highly specialized setups or with a system with a high degree of flexibility. We present a cheap, fast and versatile detection system with the ability of bright and dark field illumination. Our setup offers fast and customized switching between different illumination channels adapted to the sample. The bright field illumination offers high sensitivity to scratches, whereas dark field illumination is more sensitive to particles. The system was tested on flat and curved surfaces. Since all components explicitly use standard computer interfaces, no additional hardware is needed to connect the system to a single-board computer or workstation.