Due to my frequent involvement in friction stir welding development processes, I have found myself in need of machine vision assistance often. Specifically for seam alignment and part zeroing when setting up parts on a machine. 

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Hydraulic friction stir welding machines are big and dangerous. Cameras eliminate some of the dangers to the operator while running and setting up machines. I have designed a variety of machine vision cameras to solve those exact issues.

To further assist and simplify setup times I created an auto-seam alignment software using python and OpenCV. This program finds the wels seams and calculates the offset from the weld tool to the seam. Making the machine setup much easier as well as eliminating the dangers to the operators.