Navitar Inc., a manufacturer of precision optical and opto-electronic systems, welcomes their twenty-fifth anniversary of manufacturing high magnification video microscope lenses. Navitar's Zoom 6000, introduced in 1984, marked the beginning of the automated inspection era helping industrial OEM customers reduce costs and increase productivity.
Navitar’s experience in microscope lens applications began with its founder, David Goldstein, who entered the microscope business in 1956 as the exclusive U.S. distributor of Olympus Optical Corporation’s microscopes and scientific instruments. The company was a well established custom OEM lens manufacturer offering products for a range of uses including movie cameras, x-ray imaging, and optics for NASA’s satellite program. During this time, the company developed many long standing OEM customer relationships that spanned up to 40 years.
In the early 80’s, with fresh ideas from Goldstein’s two sons, Julian and Jeremy, Navitar put a new spin on the microscope by creating a high magnification, modular lens system that helped to support automation in the visual inspection process. The Zoom 6000 video microscope imaging lens was introduced when the need for inspection of small electronic parts was increasing worldwide. This new video lens system simulated the optical performance of the typical stereo zoom microscope, however, provided a direct input to a closed circuit television camera to display the image on a monitor. The Zoom 6000 system initially helped boost productivity by eliminating the downtime problems common to microscope systems such as operator fatigue and eyestrain. Its modular design also reduced the size of system footprints, and in turn, lowered inspection equipment costs.
“The Zoom 6000 quickly became known as Navitar’s workhorse with a building block design and easy configuration to fit nearly any application. Over the years, continuous design improvements and product line expansion have contributed to the system’s versatility making it ideal for a variety of applications and industries including semiconductor, electronic imaging, biotechnology, life sciences and healthcare fields as well”, comments Navitar co-president, Julian Goldstein.
Semiconductor and electronic imaging applications include FPD fabrication, wafer inspection, and non-contact measurement, to name a few. Biotechnology, life sciences and healthcare applications include flow cytometry, molecular diagnostics, hyperspectral microscopic imaging, laser confocal imaging, cell identification and detection, gel documentation, particle characterization, DNA sequencing, microarray scanning, proteomics, colony picking, cell sorting, live cell imaging, mass spectrometry, micro fluidics, crystal growth, along with spectral imaging in biology for In-Vivo studies in animals.
Navitar’s co-president Jeremy Goldstein comments, “Navitar provides leading equipment manufacturers with highly repeatable and automated precision optics to incorporate into new instrumentation. We are seeing more and more biotech and life science companies replacing their larger laboratory equipment and fluoroscopic microscopes with Navitar optics to achieve smaller, lower priced, and more reliable assemblies“.