The high tech distributor Electronic Production Partners GmbH (EPP) signed a contract in 1998 with an Irish company named VIGITEC, to exclusively sell their AOI (Automatic Optical Inspection) systems to the entire European market.
For Henry & Jeri Stenger, the founders and former owners of EPP, this was a perfect addition to the business, as the company could utilize its synergy of selling Laser trimmers, high temperature furnaces and other products to customers in electronic circuit manufacturing.
These customers needed automatic inspection of their thick and thin film circuits.
Automatic Inspection systems are essential in ensuring that complex electronics (like ABS) are produced and function to specification as well as improve yield and reduce production cost. Not populating an expensive ASIC or other component on an electronic board with defects like print shift, screen holes, contamination, short cuts, micro cracks etc. is essential in cutting costs and increasing yield.
Especially all big automotive customers were very happy to have a perfect solution and excellent quality control of their complex circuits.
Then in the year 2002 VIGITEC and Henry & Jeri Stenger found an agreement in a buy out proposal of the AOI line.
After some further negotiations, the deal was done and STRATUS VISION GmbH was founded in Munich in 2003.
It was essential, that the key engineers, Damien Tobin and Vincent Fitzgerald moved to Munich became co-shareholders and ensured started developing the next level of inspection solutions.
Several key customers for Automotive Electronics and DRAM electronics manufacturers could be convinced to invest in the Stratus Vision technologies and purchase solutions for their worldwide productions.
After the sale of EPP GmbH in November 2019, the entire Marketing and Sales responsibility was moved to Stratus Vision GmbH.
In April 2020, STRATUS VISION GmbH moved to new offices in Puchheim near Munich. Stratus Vision GmbH can proudly say that it is a close partner of some of the best electronic companies worldwide.
The SPIN Software, with many years of development, has matched very challenging AOI applications and is an extremely flexible and scalable solution that now enables customers in a wide variety of markets to enjoy easy CAD based inspection setups.
Stratus Vision has since 2003 been able to adapt and evolve its technologies to also serve markets beyond printed circuits on FR4 and Ceramic. Our worldwide customers use our technology for Reticles, Wafers, sensors, LTCC, HTCC and other glas based Electronics. It is necessary to mention that our solutions have gone from only inspecting to product to automatically acquiring a high number of measurement values to ensure detailed documentation and analysis of production processes. High Resolution Metrology and positional measurements, also for Vias, has become a core technological capability of Stratus Vision.