Spotlight
Vision Engineering: six decades of optical innovation
CIE Magazine visited Vision Engineering’s Surrey headquarters for an exclusive behind-the-scenes interview with Stephen Sanderson, the company’s group product manager. For more than 65 years, Vision Engineering has led the way in ergonomic microscopy and optical innovation, evolving from a small workshop into a global technology leader. In this feature, Sanderson reflects on the company’s heritage, its design philosophy and the development of its latest digital stereo microscope, the ProteQ VISO.
CIE: For readers unfamiliar with the company, who is Vision Engineering? Stephen Sanderson (SS): Vision Engineering is a global designer and manufacturer of optical and digital microscopes, headquartered in Woking, Surrey. We specialise in systems for industrial and manufacturing environments — electronics, precision engineering, medical devices, and more.
The company was founded in 1958 by Rob Freeman, an engineer at Jaguar Racing. While working there, he invented a borescope to inspect the bottom of engines without dismantling them. That idea — finding a better, more ergonomic way to see what you’re working on — became the foundation of Vision Engineering.
Rob started the business in a tin hut near our current headquarters, equipped with a lathe, a few tools and a lot of ideas. Over the decades, the company grew steadily, winning multiple Queen’s Awards for Innovation and Enterprise. Ergonomics, optical expertise and practical problem-solving have always been at the heart of what we do.
CIE: What sectors do you primarily serve today? SS: We work across a very broad range of manufacturing sectors. Electronics is a major one — inspection, rework, assembly and quality control. Precision engineering is another, along with medical devices and, increasingly, additive manufacturing. But the simplest way to describe it is: if someone has something small that they need to see bigger, we can help. Our systems are used everywhere from aerospace electronics to stem-cell research labs. We’ve seen our microscopes used to inspect components heading into space, and we’ve seen them used to examine biological samples at the cellular level. The applications are incredibly diverse.
30 February 2026
CIE: Where are your products designed and manufactured? SS: Everything begins here in the UK. Our design facility is in our headquarters building in Surrey, where we have optical engineers, mechanical engineers and electronics specialists — the full range of expertise needed to design a microscope from first principles.
We also manufacture here in the UK, and we have additional manufacturing capability in the USA. One of our strengths is vertical integration: we have our own machine shop, our own assembly lines and even our own anodising facility. We can take raw metal, machine it into precision components, finish it, assemble it and test it — all under one roof.
CIE: Why is that level of in-house control so important? SS: Quality and consistency. Many of
Components in Electronics
our customers buy a system today and then want to buy the same system again in five or ten years. If we control the entire process, we can guarantee that the performance, the feel and the results will be identical.
It also gives us agility. If we need to refine a design, respond to supply chain challenges or incorporate customer feedback, we can do that quickly. When you outsource major parts of production, you lose that responsiveness. For us, maintaining control ensures reliability — and reliability is everything in manufacturing environments.
CIE: Ergonomics seems central to everything Vision Engineering does. Why is that? SS: Ergonomics has been part of our DNA since the beginning. Rob Freeman understood that engineers needed to see
clearly without compromising comfort, and over the decades we’ve refined that philosophy into a core design principle. Traditional microscopes with eyepieces force users into awkward positions — hunched shoulders, strained necks, eye fatigue. Over time, that leads to discomfort, reduced productivity and even long-term health issues. Our eye-pieceless systems, like Mantis and Lynx EVO, eliminate those problems. Users sit comfortably, maintain a natural posture and can work for longer periods without strain. That’s good for the operator and good for the business — fewer sick days, higher productivity, better concentration.
Ergonomics isn’t an add-on for us — it’s fundamental to how we design every product. It’s also one of the key ways we differentiate ourselves in a very competitive global market, alongside continuous innovation from our design team, who
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