(GDO: Eygelshoven, Netherlands) -- GDO BV is a designer and builder of production automation and visual inspection systems based in The Netherlands. In 2007 a major European stent manufacturer came to GDO with a request: Could the company develop a system to automate stent inspection?

Out of this meeting grew a conference in Nuremburg, Germany, where a group of stent manufacturers, doctors, and engineers drew up their vision of an automated stent-inspection system. After four years of development, GDO brought the NSI-7 system to production in 2011. The first systems have completed qualification and are now being installed in Europe.

The NSI-7 measures wall thickness, stent geometry, and, using confocal laser technology, visual defects—automatically, without user attendance or intervention, at a rate of about two stents per minute. This means labor savings of up to 75 percent over current manual inspection methods.

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