Wilco Imaging is more than a distributor of industrial cameras and lenses — it is a full-service engineering and manufacturing partner capable of designing, modifying, assembling, and delivering custom imaging systems built precisely to the requirements of your application.
Wilco Imaging Engineering Services Include:
Coverglass Removal and Replacement | Microlens and Bayer Filter Removal | Sensor Modification Services | Custom Filtering | Electro-Optic and Opto-Mechanical Assembly | Transmissive Grating Spectrometers | Hyperspectral Imaging Systems | Software and Quality Inspection Services
Most imaging challenges don't arrive in a form that an off-the-shelf camera can solve on its own. Sensors need modification to reach beyond their standard spectral range. Cameras need to be ruggedized for environments they were never designed to enter. Systems need to be integrated, tested, and delivered as complete assemblies — not just as a collection of parts. And all of this needs to happen within project timelines and payload constraints that leave no room for guesswork.
The engineering team at Wilco Imaging, a Lore Technology company, has built a deep set of capabilities to address exactly these situations. From precision sensor-level modifications performed under microscope to complete electro-optic system design and assembly, Wilco's in-house engineering services allow clients across defense, security, semiconductor manufacturing, ocean robotics, and other demanding industries to get imaging systems that actually fit their problem — not the other way around.
Below is a detailed look at what those capabilities include, how they work in practice, and the kinds of projects Wilco's team has already delivered.
Image Sensor Services
The image sensor is the most fundamental component of any camera system, and it is also the component most frequently requiring modification before a standard commercial camera can meet the demands of a specialized application. Wilco Imaging performs precision sensor-level services that extend camera performance well beyond what stock configurations allow.
Coverglass Removal and Replacement
All commercial image sensors ship with a protective coverglass bonded over the silicon. In most applications this glass is entirely transparent to its presence, but in specialized imaging it becomes a meaningful optical element — one that introduces reflections, causes interference in laser-based applications, limits the installation of high-performance aftermarket optics, and prevents direct access to the sensor surface. Wilco removes coverglass with precision, giving clients direct access to the sensor surface and enabling the installation of custom optics including anti-reflection (AR) coated glass, bandpass filters, and other application-specific optical elements in its place.
Microlens and Bayer Filter Removal
Consumer and standard industrial color cameras include a Bayer color filter array — a pattern of red, green, and blue microscopic filters deposited directly over the pixel array — along with microlenses that focus light onto each pixel. For scientific, spectroscopic, and precision imaging applications, both of these elements can be a liability. The Bayer filter introduces spectral cross-talk and prevents accurate monochrome measurement. The microlenses limit the acceptance angle and angular response of the sensor. Wilco removes these elements to provide direct access to the bare pixel structure, effectively converting a color-only sensor into a true monochrome imager with improved spectral uniformity and angular sensitivity.
UV Lumogen Coating
Standard silicon-based CMOS sensors have essentially no native sensitivity to ultraviolet light. The UV Lumogen coating process applies a phosphor conversion layer to the sensor that down-converts UV photons into visible wavelengths the silicon can detect — effectively converting a visible-only camera into a UV-sensitive imaging system without requiring specialized UV-sensitive detector materials. This approach delivers UV sensitivity at a significantly lower cost than purpose-built UV cameras, and it integrates directly with the camera's existing electronics and interface.
Additional Sensor Modification Services
Beyond the three primary sensor services, Wilco's capabilities extend to a broader set of image sensing and camera modification work, including fiber bonding to the sensor face, precision filter alignment and installation directly on the sensor, optics installation at the sensor level, camera hybridization and modification for custom output or interface requirements, color processing integration to add RGB capability to modified cameras, and Bayer filter removal as a standalone service for cameras where only the color filter array — not the microlenses — needs to be removed.
Custom Filtering: Bandpass, Multispectral, and Beyond
Spectral filtering is one of the most powerful tools available to imaging system designers, and one of the most technically demanding to implement correctly. Wilco Imaging offers a comprehensive range of custom filter design and installation services, covering everything from single-wavelength bandpass filters to complex multispectral mosaic arrays.
Bandpass and AR Filters
Bandpass filters restrict the light reaching the sensor to a defined wavelength range, blocking everything outside that window. This is essential in applications where ambient illumination at unwanted wavelengths would degrade image contrast or where precise spectral selectivity is required for material discrimination. Wilco's bandpass filter capabilities span from UV through SWIR — a spectral range of approximately 200 nm to 2,500 nm — and include custom mount design and precision installation into the camera optical path.
Bayer Filter Arrays for RGB and Extended Spectral Imaging
The standard RGB Bayer pattern can be extended or replaced with custom filter arrays that add spectral channels beyond the visible. RGB-NIR Bayer arrays add a near-infrared channel to the standard red, green, and blue pattern, producing four-channel imaging in a single snapshot without any moving parts. Six-band options extend this further. These extended-band filter arrays are installed directly on the sensor following coverglass removal and active alignment procedures that ensure each filter element is precisely registered to its target pixel group.
Stripe Filters for Line Scanning
Line scanning applications — including push-broom hyperspectral imaging, aerial survey, and satellite remote sensing — require a different filter geometry. Stripe filters apply different spectral bandpass coatings to individual rows or lines of the sensor, so that as the scene moves across the sensor one line at a time, each line records the scene in a different spectral band. The resulting image stack, when combined with precise knowledge of sensor-to-scene motion, provides a spatially co-registered multispectral image at high throughput. Wilco's stripe filter capabilities support 2 to 16 spectral channels and include space-qualified options for satellite and aerospace applications.
Mosaic Filters for Snapshot Multispectral Imaging
Where line scanning is not compatible with the imaging geometry — in situations requiring a single-frame snapshot of a static scene, or in applications where platform motion cannot be precisely controlled — mosaic filters provide snapshot multispectral capability. Arranged in repeating tile patterns (3×3 or 4×4 grids are typical), mosaic filters assign a different narrowband spectral filter to each pixel in the tile, so that a single image frame captures all spectral channels simultaneously. Each pixel sees only one band, and spatial interpolation is used to reconstruct the full spectral image — the same principle as Bayer demosaicing, extended to more channels. Wilco supports 2 to 9 channel mosaic configurations, with 3 to 6 channels being most common in deployed systems.
Custom Multispectral Camera Build Process
Building a custom multispectral camera from a standard commercial sensor involves a well-defined sequence of engineering steps. Wilco's standard build timeline for a custom multispectral camera is 2 to 3 months and includes sensor selection (typically Sony IMX-series sensors; ITAR-compliant sensors are available for defense applications), filter design across 3 to 9 channels spanning 300 to 2,500 nm, with per-channel bandpass specifications typically in the 50 to 100 nm range (minimum 10 nm), filter fabrication, coverglass removal, and precision filter installation using active alignment to ensure each filter element is correctly positioned relative to the pixel array.
Top multispectral camera use cases: Space exploration and mineral analysis, crop health monitoring, medical and biomedical imaging, remote sensing and earth observation, and forensics and security — applications where spectral information beyond the visible range is essential to answering the question the system is designed to address.
Electro-Optic and Opto-Mechanical Assembly
Individual modified sensors and custom filters are components — building them into a functional, deployable imaging system requires electro-optic and opto-mechanical engineering at the system level. Wilco Imaging's assembly capabilities cover both the electronic and mechanical dimensions of this integration work.
Electro-Optic Assembly
On the electronics side, Wilco's capabilities include electronics manufacturing and assembly, custom cable assemblies (including complex multi-conductor and fiber optic configurations), design and assembly of analog and digital integrated circuits, printed circuit board fabrication and population, and complete circuit card assembly. These capabilities allow Wilco to design and build the electronic subsystems that connect a modified camera to its power, control, and data output infrastructure — rather than relying on off-the-shelf wiring harnesses that may not meet the routing, shielding, or connector specifications of a demanding installation environment.
Opto-Mechanical Assembly
The mechanical structure of an imaging system determines its optical performance as much as the sensor and optics themselves. Misalignment of optical elements, inadequate thermal design, or enclosures that transmit vibration directly to the sensor all degrade image quality in ways that cannot be compensated in software. Wilco's opto-mechanical capabilities include custom lens design and calibration, custom enclosure design and ruggedization for harsh environments, payload reduction engineering for applications with strict weight constraints, and mount design and assembly for both static and dynamic installation requirements.
Transmissive Grating Spectrometers
Wilco Imaging designs and builds fused silica-based transmissive diffraction grating components and complete OEM spectrometer assemblies — a capability that connects directly to the company's hyperspectral imaging system work and extends into standalone spectroscopy instruments for industrial, environmental, and scientific applications.
Fused silica is the substrate material of choice for high-performance transmissive gratings because of its combination of properties: high optical transmission across the UV through infrared range, thermal stability that makes it suitable for high-power laser environments, chemical resistance that enables deployment in harsh process environments, and low birefringence that preserves the polarization state of transmitted light — important in applications where polarization is itself a measurement parameter.
Wilco's grating fabrication uses stepper lithography for sub-micron pattern accuracy and anisotropic reactive ion etching (RIE) to create vertical, smooth sidewall profiles. This fabrication precision enables complex grating geometries — blazed, sinusoidal, and binary profiles — each optimized for different combinations of diffraction efficiency, wavelength range, and angular acceptance.
The complete OEM spectrometer assemblies built around these gratings are available in two primary configurations: UV-VIS covering 200 to 850 nm, and VIS-NIR covering 350 to 1,000 nm. Key design attributes include thermal stability for consistent wavelength calibration across varying operating temperatures, high sensitivity for low-light and low-concentration measurement tasks, compact form factor suitable for integration into OEM instruments, low unit-to-unit variation enabling volume production with consistent spectral performance, and environmentally robust construction for industrial deployment.
| Spectrometer Range | Wavelength Coverage | Representative Applications |
|---|---|---|
| UV-VIS | 200 – 850 nm | Spectrophotometers, medical diagnostic devices, UV process monitoring, chemical analysis |
| VIS-NIR | 350 – 1,000 nm | Environmental sensing, gas and emission detection, laser characterization, industrial inspection |
Hyperspectral Imaging Systems
Wilco Imaging's SensIR hyperspectral camera line represents the integration of the company's optical, sensor, and assembly capabilities into a complete imaging instrument. These cameras use a pushbroom acquisition architecture — capturing a complete spatial line of the scene with full spectral resolution in each frame — combined with high numerical aperture (high NA) lens-based spectrographs that maximize light throughput, and Volume Phase Holographic (VPH) transmission diffraction gratings that deliver high diffraction efficiency with minimal stray light.
The pushbroom architecture, paired with high-throughput optics, means that faster scan rates are achievable without sacrificing signal quality — a critical performance requirement in industrial sorting, inline inspection, and airborne survey applications where scene motion cannot be slowed to accommodate a slow camera. Custom optical front ends can be configured to optimize the system for specific working distances, field-of-view requirements, and spectral ranges.
Three spectral configurations are available: VNIR from 450 to 1,000 nm, NIR from 900 to 1,700 nm, and SWIR from 1,500 to 2,500 nm. The compact, lightweight, and rugged physical design makes all three suitable for field and airborne deployments, including UAV integration for agricultural and remote sensing applications.
| Configuration | Spectral Range | Key Mining & Industrial Use Cases |
|---|---|---|
| VNIR | 450 – 1,000 nm | Iron oxide mapping, vegetation stress, wafer inspection, contamination detection |
| NIR | 900 – 1,700 nm | Mineral identification, moisture analysis, pharmaceutical composition, food inspection |
| SWIR | 1,500 – 2,500 nm | Clay and carbonate mapping, core scanning, chemical residue detection, soil analysis |
Custom Engineering: Completed Customer Projects
The clearest way to understand what Wilco Imaging's engineering services look like in practice is through the actual projects the team has delivered. The following three case studies come directly from Wilco's engineering portfolio.
Objective: Design and deliver a custom hoist camera system for easy installation on law enforcement helicopters, meeting strict payload requirements without triggering additional airworthiness certification processes.
Law enforcement aviation presents a stringent set of engineering constraints that commercial off-the-shelf camera systems are not designed to meet. Weight is a hard limit — exceeding it triggers FAA certification requirements that add time and cost to deployment. Environmental exposure is extreme, with vibration, pressure variation, temperature swings, and the physical demands of hoist operations all placing stresses on the system. And installation must be straightforward enough for field technicians to execute reliably.
Wilco's engineering team designed and built a custom pressurized enclosure for the camera, providing environmental protection against pressure differentials and moisture at altitude. A complete ruggedized system design ensured the camera and its mounting hardware could withstand operational vibration and mechanical shock. Custom cable assemblies were designed specifically for the helicopter installation environment — routing, connector selection, and strain relief all tailored to the physical constraints of the airframe. And critically, the complete assembled system met the payload weight requirements that kept it below the threshold for additional certification, allowing faster deployment to the field.
Objective: Design and build a custom camera system capable of operating continuously on an offshore oil rig — one of the most demanding imaging environments in industrial practice.
An offshore oil platform presents a combination of hazards that disqualify almost every standard commercial imaging system from consideration: explosive atmosphere classification requires intrinsically safe or explosion-proof equipment, continuous saltwater exposure demands corrosion-resistant construction at every junction and seam, and the operational requirement for continuous uptime means that thermal management and electrical reliability cannot be afterthoughts.
Wilco engineered a fiber optic cable system for the signal path — fiber is inherently immune to electromagnetic interference, carries no electrical current that could serve as an ignition source in an explosive atmosphere, and is not affected by corrosion along its length. An explosion-proof enclosure was designed around the camera assembly, meeting the requirements of the hazardous area classification at the installation site. Custom PCB design ensured that the camera's electronics were laid out to the specific power, signal, and environmental requirements of the platform installation. Comprehensive testing, including environmental and stress validation, confirmed system integrity before deployment. Programming was performed to integrate the camera system with the platform's existing temperature detection and security infrastructure.
Objective: Design a custom enclosure solution for a camera system operating at high frame rates in a harsh semiconductor manufacturing environment, resolving a chronic overheating problem that was limiting operational reliability.
High-speed machine vision cameras operating continuously at high frame rates generate significant heat — heat that in a standard commercial camera body has limited pathways to dissipate. In a semiconductor manufacturing environment, where downtime is measured in dollars per minute and contamination control limits cooling options, an overheating camera is more than an inconvenience.
Wilco's engineering approach addressed the thermal problem at the hardware level. Coverglass removal was performed first, which is standard for wafer inspection applications where silicon's SWIR transparency allows subsurface defect imaging — but also reduces one optical interface that can contribute to image artifacts in high-precision inspection. The heat sink was then relocated from its factory position to a location that provided more efficient thermal coupling to the enclosure structure and better dissipation into the surrounding environment. A custom enclosure was designed around the modified camera, incorporating the relocated thermal management components and providing the physical protection appropriate for continuous high-speed operation in a manufacturing environment.
Software and Quality Inspection Services
Engineering a custom imaging system does not end with hardware. Software customization and rigorous quality verification are integral to delivering a system that performs correctly and continues to perform over its operational life.
On the software side, Wilco offers custom image processing solutions including fisheye lens dewarping removal — computationally correcting the geometric distortion inherent in wide-angle fisheye optics to produce rectilinear output images — and pre-installed lens calibration, where the camera ships with calibration data and software already configured for the lens it will be used with. This removes the calibration burden from the end user and ensures the system is measurement-ready from the moment it arrives.
Quality inspection services cover three essential validation domains: defect and image inspection to verify that sensor modifications and filter installations have not introduced artifacts or performance degradation; electrical testing to confirm that all electronic assemblies and cable systems meet specification under power; and environmental and stress testing to validate that the complete system will perform within its rated operating conditions — temperature, humidity, vibration, and shock — before it reaches the field.
Why Work With Wilco Imaging Engineering
The engineering services described above are not offered by most imaging distributors, and they are not offered casually by Wilco. Each capability represents genuine in-house expertise — the kind that comes from having actually delivered the projects described above, not from having listed services on a brochure. The team at Wilco works closely with clients from the earliest stage of problem definition through sensor selection, modification, system design, assembly, testing, and delivery.
What makes this approach valuable is the integration of disciplines that normally sit in separate organizations. Sensor modification expertise, filter design and installation, electro-optic assembly, PCB design, custom enclosure engineering, cable assembly, software integration, and quality verification are all available from a single team under one roof in West Sacramento, California. That integration shortens timelines, simplifies communication, and produces systems where every component is designed to work with every other — rather than assembled from parts sourced from different suppliers who have never spoken to each other.
If you have an imaging challenge that standard off-the-shelf products cannot solve — whether it is a spectral range, a form factor, an environmental rating, a payload constraint, or a combination of all of these — Wilco Imaging's engineering team is the right starting point. Learn more about our custom engineering and contract manufacturing services here.
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