Reduce Excessive Zoom Lens Wear

This article provides some recommendations to prevent the zoom lens from suffering wear prematurely.

Background

There are two major factors that contribute to excessive wear of the zoom lens on automated machines with multiple zoom stops.

initializing the machine frequently
changing the zoom stop unnecessarily often in an inspection program

Recommended Procedures

Reduce Initialization of the machine and zoom lens

Use the Standby mode of Post 2020 Machines instead of powering off the machine if sufficient.
The following section can be found in the user manual:

Pressing the Standby Button will place the machine into Standby mode (Amber). This mode will not power the motors but the machine will maintain minimum functionality. Use this mode when manually moving the X & Y axis, or manually lifting the Z-axis up. Note that Z-brake will be engaged in this mode so the Z-axis will not move downward. Pressing the front button a second time will return the machine to “Operation Enabled” mode (Green). Pressing the standby button for more than 3 seconds will “Turn Off” (Power Down) the machine.

Details regarding power consumption in standby mode can be found in the machine specifications on the Micro-Vu website:

Vertex 261, 34X: 35W (sleep/standby)

Excel 51X, 70X, 90X, 130X, 170X and 2500: 45W (sleep/standby)

Reduce zoom stop changes during program playback

Optimize inspection program playback to reduce unnecessary zoom stop changes using the following technique:

Measure all features for each zoom stop at once, without switching back and forth between zoom stops.