Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence Earns Prestigious Design Award

Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence (formerly Hexagon Metrology) announced today that its WLS qFLASH vision measurement system has won a distinguished GOOD DESIGN Award from the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design.

Founded in 1950, GOOD DESIGN is the oldest, most prestigious international awards programme to annually highlight innovative industrial, product and graphic designs created around the world. The WLS qFLASH earned top honours in the industrial design category. All entries for the awards programme must be designed for a mass market and in production or manufactured for at least 2 years before the title year. Submissions are judged by a jury of design professionals, leading industry specialists and design press, based on criteria including the highest aesthetics in terms of innovative design, new technologies, form, materials and function.

The award-winning WLS qFLASH is a non-contact, optical shop-floor system that uses advanced blue LED high-power illumination for portable 3D measurement. Wrapped in a robust carbon fibre housing, the vision system’s optical head design is small, light and easy to handle in confined industrial spaces. With low sensitivity to machinery vibration, industrial light or temperature changes, WLS qFLASH enables manufacturers of small to medium size parts to measure surfaces and features in formidable production environments such as stamping facilities. The WLS qFLASH stereo-vision technology enables fast image acquisition in less than 10 milliseconds on average, enabling constant measurement workflow. Shiny objects and surfaces can be measured without treatment, adding another level of inspection efficiency.

“Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence is honoured to receive a GOOD DESIGN 2015 award for the groundbreaking WLS qFLASH product and its state-of-the-art blue light technology,” said Nathan Persky, General Manager at Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence Israel where the WLS qFLASH was designed. “There is stiff competition for these awards with Fortune 500 companies and other prominent global manufacturers, so it is quite challenging to rank in a design category. The award acknowledges WLS qFLASH as a whole package – small footprint, lightweight design, affordable price point – which makes it a very dynamic solution for today's industrial metrology marketplace.”