TOLLAND, CT- Virtek Vision Intl (Waterloo, Canada) a business of Gerber Technology, is celebrating its 25-year anniversary in December 2011. The company serves the world’s 10 largest public aerospace companies, providing laser templating solutions to automate the assembly of carbon fiber composite parts. It also offers inspection systems that accelerate first article and in-process quality checks, primarily for sheet metal fabricators.

Virtek currently holds 33 patents on the use of lasers for part assembly and quality control processes.

Virtek was founded in 1986 to commercialize technology developed at the Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. In 1996, driven by market opportunity, Virtek shifted its focus from the development of vision technologies to the development of precision laser systems. In 1997, the company acquired the rights to a patent belonging to Boeing that applied laser projection technology to the composite ply layup process. Since then, Virtek’s products have helped aerospace manufacturers eliminate the need for cumbersome physical templates, reduce costly rejects and save set-up time.

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.

Virtek employs nearly 70 individuals, 65% of which have an engineering or technical background.