Cognex Expands Market for Web Inspection with New Product Offering.

NATICK, Mass. -- Cognex Corporation (NASDAQ: CGNX), the world's leading supplier of machine vision systems, announced today that it has added a totally new inspection capability to its SmartView(R) surface inspection systems. The new software package, called Surface Quality Monitoring (SQM), is a revolutionary tool that automatically assesses the overall visual appearance of the surfaces of metals and plastics, as well as the appearance of surface coatings on paper and other materials as they are being manufactured.

Unlike SmartView's defect detection tools which identify and categorize discrete defects on the surfaces of materials, SQM will be used to evaluate surface qualities such as smoothness, roughness, patterning and texture in order to ensure that they are within acceptable limits. When the SmartView System with SQM software detects any deviation at or near those limits, it will immediately alert plant operators to make adjustments to the process so that no defective material is ever manufactured.

"We are really pleased with this new capability," said Roeland Boertje, a project manager at Corus Strip Products, a leading manufacturer of galvanized steel in the Netherlands that is currently using a SmartView system with SQM. "Getting an objective evaluation of surface quality in real-time allows us to optimize process parameters and gives us increased control over manufacturing quality."

"Cognex is the only supplier of surface inspection systems offering this revolutionary new capability," said Markku Jaaskelainen, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cognex's Surface Inspection Systems Division. "We expect this tool to be quickly adopted by many current customers who are using SmartView for defect detection. And, we believe that this important new feature will not only help us to increase our market share, but that it will also help us expand into new applications where automated defect detection is not used, but where there is a need for surface quality inspection."

Cognex's SmartView system is a state-of-the-art surface inspection system that is used to automatically detect, identify, and visualize defects and, now with SQM, to also evaluate surface quality in materials as they are being produced in a continuous web. SmartView can detect and classify defects much smaller than a square millimeter in the most challenging applications at full production speeds, which enables manufacturers to both improve product quality and reduce scrap, resulting in increased profitability.

About Cognex

Cognex Corporation designs, develops, manufactures, and markets machine vision sensors and systems, or devices that can "see." Cognex vision sensors are used in factories around the world to automate the manufacture of a wide range of items and to assure their quality. Cognex is the world's leader in the machine vision industry, having shipped more than 300,000 machine vision systems, representing over $1.9 billion in cumulative revenue, since the company's founding in 1981. In addition to its corporate headquarters in Natick, Massachusetts, Cognex also has regional offices and distributors located throughout North America, Japan, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Visit Cognex on-line at http://www.cognex.com.