Advanced Photonix Announces Industrial Sale to Japanese Market
ANN ARBOR -- Advanced Photonix Inc. (NYSE Amex: API) said last week that it had received $760,000 in orders for multiple T-Gauge systems.
These systems will be delivered to API's Japanese distributor, Spectra Design Ltd., in API's third quarter and will be deployed on a manufacturing line providing 100 percent inspection of a packaged product for quality control.
This is the first industrial deployment of terahertz in Japan. In addition to the deployed systems, Spectra Design has purchased a system to utilize in their lab for further sales support and application development.
The T-Gauge systems will inspect individual packages for contaminants or anomalies in a powder. This high-speed application was jointly developed by API and a distributor. The system will scan each individual package in five seconds using both imaging and waveform analysis to determine product quality.
The ability of terahertz energy to penetrate non-conducting materials allows inspection of packages containing solid and liquid products. The wide frequency content and high precision of the T-Gauge system provides sensitivity to both physical and chemical changes in the product. Measurement of thickness, density, and certain material properties can be used to monitor the quality of manufactured products.
"This represents the first industrial quality control deployment of our terahertz systems in a foreign market," said API CEO Richard Kurtz. "It is also the first industrial imaging application for on-line quality control using THz and expands the number of future industrial applications for our T-Gauge systems."
Spectra Design is located in Tochigi, Japan and has provided nondestructive and noncontact inspection technology to the Japanese market since 2004. The company specializes in optical measurement technologies for difficult industrial testing applications.
Advanced Photonix offers optoelectronic products, high-speed optical receivers and terahertz instrumentation for telecom, homeland security, military, medical and industrial markets. More at www.advancedphotonix.com.
