Virtek, headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, also offers inspection systems for sheet metal fabricators.
Virtek was founded in 1986 to commercialise technology developed at the Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Waterloo. In 1996, Virtek shifted its focus from the development of vision technologies to the development of precision laser systems.
| “We are proud of our legacy of innovation and our service to the aerospace industry. Virtek’s products, including the Virtek LaserEdge® laser templating system, have been used to build carbon fibre composite parts for virtually all aerospace programmes that use composite technology. And our Virtek LaserQC®, which inspects parts in seconds, has become the benchmark for speed and accuracy." |
| Hal Osthus, president of Virtek |
In 1997, the company acquired the rights to a patent belonging to Boeing that applied laser projection technology to the composite ply lay-up process. Since then, Virtek’s products have helped aerospace manufacturers eliminate the need for physical templates, reduce costly rejects and save set-up time.
Virtek currently holds 33 patents on the use of lasers for part assembly and quality control processes.
Gerber Technology acquired Virtek in 2008. The combination of Virtek’s laser products with Gerber Technology’s product portfolio offers manufacturers a complete suite of automation solutions to address nesting, cutting, cut part identification and kitting as well as projected ply lay-up and quality inspection.
