How Vision Engineering is advancing precision inspection with breakthrough 3D technology and continued global expansion
For more than six decades, precision, innovation, and human-centered design have been at the heart of Vision Engineering’s success. Founded in 1958, Vision Engineering is a true British engineering success story, designing and manufacturing award-winning eyepiece-less stereo microscopes, advanced digital 3D inspection systems, and high-performance metrology solutions. Trusted by professionals across industries worldwide, the company’s technology enables organizations to improve quality control, enhance productivity, and streamline processes in the most demanding applications.
Since we last spoke with Vision Engineering in 2025, the company has appointed a new Director of Group Sales, Jacques Brummer, who joins us to elaborate on recent developments and innovations. “It has been a transformative period for the Group,” Jacques enthuses. “On the product side, we launched ProteQ VISO, our new 3D digital stereo microscope — probably the most significant innovation to come out of Vision Engineering in some time, because it brings true stereo, glasses-free 3D viewing to a digital, collaborative platform. Alongside that, we’ve extended our digital inspection and metrology ranges with the EVO Cam HALO 4K digital microscope, the Edge series bench-top optical zoom measuring systems, and further additions to our digital inspection range scheduled for release soon.
“We’ve also been investing in the wider Group. Milturn Precision Engineering (Milturn) – our contract machining business in the East Midlands – has been growing its anodizing, milling, turning, and contract machining capabilities, and we’ve been putting real investment into modernizing that infrastructure. We’ve also just welcomed Becon Precision Engineering into the Vision Engineering Group, expanding our machining capability to include manufacturing ultra-precision components for the subsea oil and gas industry and the defense sector, meeting exceptionally strict tolerances and machining complex exotic materials.
“On the leadership front, Harry Curtis joined our board as Technical Director, and I joined as Director of Group Sales, with a remit that spans not just our core microscopy and metrology portfolio but also VE Technical Partnerships (VETP), TriTeQ, and Milturn.”
Alongside these investments, Vision Engineering is expanding its market presence. “Our new Singapore office has opened recently to support our push into Southeast Asia, starting with the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam markets,” Jacques reveals. “Having a dedicated presence in Singapore means faster response times for demonstrations, applications support, and after-sales service, rather than routing everything through our existing regional offices. It also puts us closer to the design and R&D centers that many of our electronics and medical device customers are now basing in the region, so we can be part of those conversations much earlier – which is exactly where a company like ours adds the most value. Ultimately, it’s about making sure Southeast Asian manufacturers get the same level of local support that our customers in Europe and North America are used to.”
These investments and expansions reflect a broader strategy for Vision Engineering’s future. While new products, capabilities, and markets are important milestones, the driving force behind the Group’s success has always been its ability to identify real-world problems and develop practical, innovative solutions that make a measurable difference – the rationale behind its ProteQ VISO innovation.
“Everything we do starts from an ergonomic and operational problem, not from technology for its own sake,” Jacques elaborates. “That goes right back to our founder, Rob Freeman – a racing engineer who couldn’t inspect Jaguar’s Grand Prix engine components without dismantling them and so built a borescope to solve that specific problem. That instinct still drives our R&D today. Practically, that means our design, optical engineering, and software teams sit together at our Woking headquarters so a new idea can move from concept to prototype to production without getting lost between departments.
“We also spend a lot of time with customers on their production floors and in their labs, in sectors from aerospace and electronics to medical device and biomedical research, because the best insights about where 2D inspection is falling short, or where an operator is fatigued by end of shift, come from watching the work happen. ProteQ VISO is a good example of where that approach led: it came from recognizing that digital inspection had gained connectivity and shareability but lost the depth perception that stereo microscopy gives you and asking whether we could get both.”
The company’s development of ProteQ VISO offers a solution designed to address a fundamental challenge in modern digital inspection – how to combine the convenience, connectivity, and collaboration benefits of digital systems with the depth perception and visual understanding that traditional stereo microscopy provides.
“ProteQ VISO is a 3D digital stereo microscope with a fully integrated autostereo display, so the operator sees a genuine three-dimensional image on a flat screen, with real depth and form, without eyepieces, headsets, or 3D glasses,” Jacques details. “It uses cameras and intelligent eye-tracking to keep that 3D image clear and stable while the operator’s hands stay completely free to manipulate the component. You get a smooth 10:1 zoom, live magnification readout, quick-change lighting modules, lockable detents, and a detachable display so it can be used in cleanroom environments.
“What really sets it apart, though, is what happens when you need to collaborate,” he continues. “You can switch instantly from 3D to 2D mono viewing for a group discussion, stream the live 3D view to colleagues anywhere in the world, and let multiple people annotate and measure on that shared view simultaneously. No other stereo microscope on the market lets you do that today. We’re seeing strong uptake in electronics assembly and rework, PCB inspection, medical device development, and aerospace composite and surface inspection, precisely because those are all applications right now where depth perception and remote collaboration both matter.”
As Vision Engineering looks ahead, its passion remains in combining innovation, precision engineering, and customer insight to solve real-world inspection challenges. With continued investment in digital technologies, global support, and its growing capabilities, the company is well-positioned to help manufacturers improve quality, efficiency, and collaboration.
“We’ve got three main priorities for the rest of 2026,” Jacques says, optimistic for the months ahead. “First, driving adoption of ProteQ VISO and our newer digital inspection products across all our regions. We’re launching new digital inspection technology later this year which will move our customers’ inspection capability on again. Second, progressing our Southeast Asian expansion so our Singapore presence is properly embedded and delivering local support, not just a flag on the map. And third, continuing to bed in the unified Group sales structure, so that whichever part of Vision Engineering, VETP, TriTeQ, or Milturn a customer first talks to, they get a clear route to everything else we can offer them.
“Underpinning all of that is a simple priority: keep listening to customers on the factory floor. That’s where the next problem worth solving always reveals itself,” he affirms, concluding our conversation. “Ultimately, the goal is the same one Rob Freeman had when he built that first borescope: make it easier, faster, and more comfortable for people to see the things that matter.”
