What is an Infrared Camera Lens, and What are its Applications?
An infrared camera lens is a special lens that can capture infrared radiation that is not visible with the naked eye and standard lenses. For that reason, these special lenses are used by various industries, including life sciences, medical, construction, surveillance/security, and automotive. Their ability to capture infrared radiation allows you to perform multiple tasks that are not possible with standard lenses. For example, they are used for night vision, accurate temperature measurement, capturing heat signals, and detecting cracks/defects. IR lenses are also used for medical diagnosis due to their ability to produce thermal images.
The personal uses of infrared lenses are limited to security and photography. Their ability to detect heat signatures proves very efficient in dark conditions with low or no light. Infrared lenses produce images with unique color compositions that help photographers capture breathtaking pictures. As an industrial cameras lens, infrared lenses help reduce downtime and increase the efficiency of industrial processes with accurate data collection. In this article, we will go into detail about the multiple uses and benefits of infrared lenses.
Security, Quality Control, and Other Uses of Infrared Camera Lenses
Infrared lenses are used by several industries for security, automation, and other significant industrial processes. An infrared camera lens costs you more than a traditional lens, but the price is worth the benefits. Different applications and uses of IR lenses are given below:
1. Quality Control
Infrared lenses produce thermal images that contain information regarding the temperatures of industrial machinery and products. It helps detect a rise or fall in temperature from the desired or ideal temperature level. As a result, staff will immediately know if any equipment is heating up beyond the tolerated limit, preventing damage to the expensive machinery and products.
2. Medical Diagnostics
The medical sector uses infrared lenses to perform safe and painless non-invasive diagnosis. IR lenses produce thermal images of the body, which allows medical professionals to identify unusual and abnormal temperature patterns.
3. Finding Cracks
Manufacturing and construction industries use infrared imaging to find cracks and faults that are invisible to human eyes. A major advantage of infrared inspection is that they are non-destructive, which means that it is possible to search for faults, cracks, and defects without damaging the property or manufactured products.
4. Security Monitoring
For industries and commercial spaces, expensive machinery and valuable resources, high-level security and surveillance are necessary for the protection of these machines and resources, especially during the nighttime. Thieves and burglars try to take advantage of low visibility and mainly attempt burglary and invasion after it gets dark. However, this can be prevented with the help of using IR security camera lens. IR lenses work extremely well in low-light or no-light conditions because they use heat signals to capture images. As a result, they can detect unusual moments accurately to alert security guards about the presence of an unidentified entity.
5. Life Sciences
Infrared lenses play an important role in life science. These lenses are generally used for spectroscopy and to create thermal images.
Features like accurate error detection and quality control, IR lenses help industries to achieve efficient working. Accurate error detection allows you to detect faults and malfunctions in the early stage. As a result, it saves you the cost of machinery repairs and also significantly reduces the downtime.
Short, Mid, or Long Wavelength Infrared Lens – How to Choose
There are different types of Infrared lenses, including Short-Wave Infrared, Mid-Wave Infrared, and Long-Wave Infrared. All these lens types capture the infrared radiation, but have some distinct features. The different uses and information of these different IR lenses are given below:
SWIR – The major uses of these lenses include quality inspection & control, security/surveillance, and many more. SWIR imaging is used by multiple industries because of its ability to penetrate through objects and capture light that is not visible to the human eye.
MWIR – These lenses efficiently capture thermal radiation from objects and are mainly used in high-temperature places to detect temperature variations. However, these lenses are comparatively more expensive as they require cooling systems to work.
LWIR – Unlike MWIR lenses, LWIR lenses do not require cooling and are also more cost-efficient than other IR lenses. They produce thermal images, which are ideal for capturing images in heavy fog conditions. Long-wave IR lenses are used in defense industries for high-level security and enemy identification.
Other Important Industrial Lenses By Superior CCTV
- Superior CCTV develops IR lenses with precision and uses modern software technology. We ensure that the lenses we develop follow the quality standards. In addition to developing high-quality IR lenses, other major industrial lenses that we develop include:
- Automotive Lens
- Telecentric Lens
- F-theta Lens
- Line Scan Lens
- Machine Vision Lens
- M12 Lens
- Telecentric Imaging Lens
Conclusion
An Infrared camera lens is used for various personal, commercial, and industrial applications. Their ability to capture thermal imaging allows the user to detect unusual movement even in pitch-black conditions. Therefore, cameras with infrared lenses are mostly used in places that require high-level security monitoring. While these lenses work extremely well for security and surveillance, their application goes way beyond that. Thermal imaging produced by infrared lenses can identify flaws and cracks in industrial machinery or products that are impossible to detect with the naked eye.
Manufacturing infrared lenses requires extreme precision, years of experience, and advanced labs with modern software technology. SuperiorCCTV is a trusted lens manufacturer that has all the aforementioned qualities and a dedicated staff that works for customer satisfaction. Our primary focus is to provide our customers with the highest quality infrared lenses, made by following all the strict global quality standards. In addition to offering these high-quality lenses, our optical experts will provide experience-based consultation without any additional charges.
You can contact us if you have any further questions, queries, or doubts. Our dedicated staff will help you every step of the way.