JAI has expanded its high-end Apex Series with three new 5.1-megapixel, 3-CMOS prism-based area scan cameras engineered for demanding color inspection tasks. These models—AP-5100T-CXPA, AP-5100T-MCL, and AP-5100T-5GE—enhance the Apex family to a total of ten camera variants, offering customers an even broader choice of resolution, throughput, and interface options for advanced machine vision workflows.
Built around three Sony Pregius IMX548 backside-illuminated sensors, each new camera delivers 3 × 5.1 megapixels with impressive frame rates: up to 75 fps for the CoaXPress model, 55 fps for the Mini Camera Link model, and 32 fps for the 5GigE Vision version. This combination of high resolution and high-speed readout makes the cameras suitable for inspection environments where both detail and throughput are critical.
As with other Apex models, these new cameras use JAI’s renowned prism-based imaging technology. A precisely engineered prism block uses hard dichroic filters with steep spectral cutoffs to split incoming light into red, green, and blue wavelengths. Each channel is captured by a dedicated CMOS sensor aligned pixel-to-pixel, eliminating the interpolation artifacts and color crosstalk found in Bayer mosaic cameras. The result is exceptionally accurate color representation, sharper spatial detail, and higher signal integrity—benefits that are essential for detecting subtle defects, color deviations, or microstructures in precision manufacturing.
The cameras come equipped with the full suite of Apex features, including pixel binning, single and multi-ROI, automatic level control, sequencer functionality, in-camera color space conversion, channel-independent exposure, shading correction, and more. New to this generation is Xscale, a floating-point sub-pixel scaling function that allows users to fine-tune pixel size, sensitivity, and resolution beyond the limits of conventional binning. This flexibility supports both high-resolution inspection and high-sensitivity workflows where lighting or exposure constraints exist.
Another key enhancement is in-camera chromatic aberration correction, which enables precise per-channel magnification adjustments to counteract lateral lens dispersion. This ensures perfect spatial alignment across all color channels – especially valuable for measurement tasks, multi-spectral imaging setups, and applications requiring consistent edge sharpness across the field of view.
The models also provide four opto-isolated inputs and four outputs, allowing system designers to configure sophisticated triggering schemes. This includes multi-camera synchronization, coordinated LED illumination, motion control device timing, or multi-step spectral acquisition sequences.
Engineered for industrial reliability, the new cameras feature rugged housings with 50G shock and 3G vibration tolerance and support operating temperatures from –5°C to +45°C. This durability ensures stable, dependable operation even in harsh production environments such as semiconductor fabrication, PCB/MLCC inspection, or high-speed print and packaging lines.
Target applications include high-accuracy color inspection across displays, electronics manufacturing, food quality assessment, pharmaceutical packaging, print verification, and more. Wherever precise color differentiation and repeatable image quality are required, the new 5.1-MP Apex cameras deliver measurable performance advantages.
For more details, readers can download the Apex brochure or access the latest model-specific datasheets for CoaXPress, Mini Camera Link, and 5GigE Vision versions on our website.
