Vision Podcast #12 – Killer Cabling w/ CEI by 2Connect

Stephen Mott of Components Express Inc. by 2Connect discusses the crucial role of cables in machine vision projects and shares insights from his 29-year career. He highlights the company’s focus on validation and customization to meet the rigorous demands of industries like automotive, logistics, semiconductor, and medical devices. The episode also touches on CEI/2Connect’s global reach and future plans. Sponsored by MVTec.

Episode sections:

• podcast
• guest information
• sponsor information
• survey – in partnership with our guest
• episode chapters
• episode transcript

---

Episode Sponsor

What defines state-of-the-art vision?
MVTec’s latest HALCON and MERLIC releases set the bar—powering inspection, robotics, and quality control across the U.S., Europe, and Asia with advanced deep learning and 3D.
See what’s new at mvtec.com/mvpro.

---

About our guest

More about our guest’s products and solutions

Interested in joining the conversation? Take part in our 2025 Cable Purchasing Survey, in partnership with our episode guest CEI by 2Connect. What drives your cable purchasing decisions? Barriers, frustrations or wins? Tell us all in this 2-minute survey and enter our draw for a chance to win a $50/€50 Amazon voucher.

---

Podcast Chapters

Click on the chapter titles to access the corresponding sections of the transcript below:

1.Introduction & Stephen’s Journey to Machine Vision – Josh introduces the episode and guest, then Stephen shares his story — from welding bus chassis in Australia to joining CEI 2Connect in the U.S. and entering the machine vision world.

2. Memorable Projects & Real-World Challenges – Stephen recalls CEI’s standout applications, including solving a paint-bay issue for a major car manufacturer and the now-famous USB-C logistics warehouse story.

3. Why Validation Defines CEI 2Connect – How CEI built its reputation on performance validation — the philosophy that every system must be proven to exceed requirements.

4. Designing with Cables in Mind – Why cables shouldn’t be an afterthought in system design — and how planning early prevents system failures.

5. Beyond Cables: Enclosures, Mounts & Smart Hardware – CEI’s expansion into camera enclosures, mounting hardware, and specialized equipment for demanding environments.

6. Joining 2Connect: Global Reach, Local Service – How CEI’s acquisition by 2Connect improved manufacturing coverage and delivery speed through a “in the region for the region” strategy.

7. Product Innovation: Configurator, Custom Builds & Bitmaxx – Highlights of CEI’s online configurator, collaborative custom design process, and the Bitmaxx series that doubles cable length without losing speed.

8. Industry Outlook: Growth, Events & Emerging Markets – Stephen discusses CEI’s upcoming trade shows, industry expansion, and growth in defense, semiconductor, and medical sectors.

9. Final Thoughts & Close – Including Stephen’s advice for engineers and integrators

---

Episode Transcript

Stephen Mott, guest

‘We’ve commonly found over the years that the cable is always the last piece of the puzzle. You’ve got the hardware, you’ve got the software, you’ve got the lighting, you’ve got the lands in. Okay, now how do we put this all together? Oh, we need a cable.’

[00:00:14.720] – Josh Eastburn, host

Hello and welcome to the MVPro podcast. As you know, it takes all kinds of technologies to bring a vision project together. Today we explore an important and not to be overlooked corner of the components landscape through a conversation with Stephen Mott of Components Express Incorporated by 2Connect. CEI 2Connect specializes in custom cable assemblies and high-performance connectivity solutions for demanding environments. Their expertise spans industries such as semiconductor, medical device, defense, heavy-duty vehicles, and data centers, including high-speed data applications such as machine vision. Steve was born and raised in Sydney, where he attended trade school and became a certified welder in 1980. He worked his way up from the bottom of CEI 2Connect has lived back and forth between Australia and the US and traveled the world promoting and educating on CEI 2Connect’s machine vision cabling solutions.

[00:01:05.620] – Josh Eastburn, host

Today’s episode is sponsored by MVTEC. If you’re building machine vision solutions, you’ve probably heard of MVTEC, the makers of HALCON and MERLIC, two leading software products for machine vision. HALCON delivers state-of-the-art AI and deep learning to build powerful and reliable solutions, while MERLIC offers a unique no-code approach to quickly create applications. Both are continuously updated with new features to keep your projects ahead of the competition. Learn more about their upcoming software releases at mvtec.com/mvpro.

[00:01:40.770] – Josh Eastburn, host

And with that, let’s get started. I saw that you started off in welding. Did you spend some time as a welder?

[00:01:49.090] – Stephen Mott, guest

Yeah, I left high school in ’78. And I’m like, I’m done with education. I’m going to trade school. So I went to trade school and I got a part-time job, you know, in a bus manufacturing company and started working at the bottom there. Once I got the welding certificate, moved up the chain and started welding on bus chassis and, and configuring different coaches and different styles of bus chassis and, and then, you know, continued on with that and moved jobs a couple of times. So, yeah, that’s how I made my bones, so to speak, is that he’s like, you know, big overalls, welding helmet gloves, and just shredding out welding, you know.

[00:02:30.980] – Josh Eastburn, host

And how long did you do that before you ended up at CEI?

[00:02:34.740] – Stephen Mott, guest

Let’s say, so I started there in 1980, and then I moved to the US in 1991. So, you know, a good 10-11 years, you know?

[00:02:45.300] – Josh Eastburn, host

Yeah, that’s a good run.

[00:02:46.260] – Stephen Mott, guest

It’s hard yakka, as they say, but it’s really, it’s a satisfying thing when you can, when you look at a finished design, a finished product, it’s like, yeah, there’s going to be people driving around Australia, traveling around Australia on the bus that I just built, you know, so yeah.

[00:03:03.850] – Josh Eastburn, host

Yeah, absolutely. How did you go from that to working in machine vision? How did you make that transition?

[00:03:11.290] – Stephen Mott, guest

Well, when I moved to the US, I didn’t have a job. So, so then my wife was working in a mall and she knew somebody that owns a cable company and that cable company partner left that cable company and started CEI. And then, so a whole bunch of things had to align for me to actually begin working at CEI. And so October 1996 is when I first started, you know, 29 years later, here we are.

[00:03:40.750] – Josh Eastburn, host

How new was that corner of kind of the manufacturing world for you? How’d you, how’d you crossed at all with that.

[00:03:49.300] – Stephen Mott, guest

No idea. I didn’t even know how to use a computer at that time. No idea. I’m a baby boomer. So I was like, I grew up with nothing. You know, I was never…

[00:04:01.060] – Josh Eastburn, host

Yeah, mid nineties, sure. So in 29 years, you must have seen a lot of different types of applications. I always like to ask people about maybe a favorite machine vision application that you’ve been part of, that you’ve seen that Components Express 2Connect has supported. Is there one that stands out in your mind?

[00:04:17.030] – Stephen Mott, guest

Well, you know, a lot of our big accomplishments have a lot of confidentiality tied to them. So I, in essence, when it, when I look at two of the one that’s back from a while ago, one of the more recent ones, these two probably like stand out. It’s like solving a paint, like a, interconnects problem within a paint bay and an automotive manufacturing facility in Germany. That was like, like a video. So we had a custom design. It’s like, okay, how do we get this to work and solve the paint problem getting in? It’s like, so our engineering staff got together with the engineers over there, designed something, implemented, and we solved that. It’s been ongoing for 15 years. I had a big German car manufacturer, you know, so that, that kind of like, that one stays with you. It’s like, yes, we, we solved somebody a problem for a really, really big car manufacturer. And then just more recently, we solved an interconnect problem for a huge logistics warehouse player in the world market. And you know, that’s once you solve that problem, that equal trades that passes a lot of word of mouth.

[00:05:32.040] – Stephen Mott, guest

It’s like, you know, it’s like, you know, you need to call these people when you got a problem, you know.

[00:05:38.620] – Josh Eastburn, host

I think Clay [Clayton Webber, CEO and President at Components Express Inc., ed.] told me about that logistics one. Was that the one with the USB cables?

[00:05:45.180] – Stephen Mott, guest

Yes.

[00:05:46.060] – Josh Eastburn, host

So the employees at this warehouse saw these USB-C cables and saw that they were compatible, at least physically, with their phones. And did they not realize that they were being used for vision applications?

[00:05:58.300] – Stephen Mott, guest

No, absolutely not. Well, no, no, no, no. And when you consider, like, you, the commercial side of it, when you go to a store and buy something, it’s very, very thin and it only has one purpose. Whereas this one was probably seven or eight times the diameter of the actual cable. And to make it more robust for the application, and it carries a lot of other signal integrity compared to what that phone charger cable does. So it’s like, yeah, it looks right. Yeah, no.

[00:06:31.870] – Josh Eastburn, host

So this is a specialty USB-C cable for vision. And okay, but because it was physically compatible, they just didn’t realize it or hadn’t put two and two together to realize they shouldn’t be tampering with this stuff.

[00:06:43.870] – Stephen Mott, guest

People that don’t know cables, once you try to connect something and then it’s the cable isn’t as robust or the design isn’t as robust as what it needs, you’ve got people moving things across a bench, reaching over, flipping it over, stepping on, something falls on the ground, it’ll break the cable, break the connection or whatever. So it’s like, no, this is meant for this specific application. Leave it there, plug it in, plug your own phone in somewhere else in the locker room, the lunchroom, whatever, with your little Apple table or whatever. But yeah, leave this one in place and let it do its job. And one of our internal design engineers came up with a solution. It’s like, It’s something that we’ve had as part of our standard product, but it’s like, okay, if we made these few changes and implemented this, then here’s a design proposal. And then they said, okay, this has passed all of our requirements out in within our, you know, logistics warehouse. And they said, okay, here’s your here’s your first big order. And then let’s let’s go from there. Once once you’re adapting various specifications to an application to override whatever shortcomings that that application might have, you know it’s not just about meeting the requirement, it’s about exceeding the requirement, always exceeding the requirement. So you have some kind of headroom in there. So if things start to deteriorate, you’ve still got the major headroom in there to allow the application to still function properly.

[00:08:16.870] – Josh Eastburn, host

I was going to ask a similar question actually about what you feel like make CEI 2Connect stand out or, you know, why are you the supplier of choice for the customers that work with you? Or where do you think if you want to get a little saltier with this, where are other suppliers typically dropping the ball that you think kind of miss.

[00:08:33.840] – Stephen Mott, guest

I think I can round all that up into one word. And that word is Validation. If you validate the performance of the system with with your cable above equal to or above the required specification or the actual requirement, if you can’t exceed that and prove that you can exceed that, then you’re playing with fire from the onset. So validation is really what is another part of our DNA. It’s like on every aspect.

[00:09:10.800] – Josh Eastburn, host

So what’s your testing policy look like then? How do you make that or how do you implement that level of validation?

[00:09:17.400] – Stephen Mott, guest

Every vision standard has its own performance requirements. Okay, so CEI has a test bed, a dedicated test bed for every vision system, every vision standard. So every cable is 100% performance tested, not just electrically point to point, performance tested to meet or exceed the requirements of that particular vision standard. There’s a big, you know, capital expenditure to set these test beds up because, you know, some of the hardware is not, some of the hardware software is not cheap. But that’s how we went out and we got business map competitors and that’s how we continue to do that today. And people are assured that it’s okay. What does CEI stand for? Validation. Validation.

[00:10:07.590] – Josh Eastburn, host

Interesting. Because I’m, I’m pretty sure that most people aren’t thinking as deeply about machine vision cabling as you do, right? Probably everybody thinks, you know, cables are cables are cables. So that’s why I, I think I like that story about the USB-C thing because obviously, you know, those, that was the issue there, right? Those cables were not the same, even though they might have looked the same. And then you’re thinking, you know, even more about the quality of, of what you’re putting out and what not. So what are some other things maybe that, that you find that your customers customers maybe tend to overlook, is it they’re specifying things too early, too late, they’re giving too little information, not setting aside enough budget. Where are people going wrong with this important corner of their design?

[00:10:55.100] – Stephen Mott, guest

We’ve commonly found over the years that the cable is always the last piece of the puzzle. It’s like, okay, you’ve got the hardware, you’ve got the software, you’ve got the lighting, you’ve got the lands, everything goes together and they’re like, okay, now how do we put this all together? It’s like, oh, we need a cable. It’s like, okay, we’ll just go out and grab something. It’s like, well, then you put it together. It’s like, why doesn’t the system work? It’s like, well, okay, you need some forethought. It’s like, okay, that’s without a validated cable, that system is not going to work. So why not put that at the forefront with all of the other associated pieces of the puzzle and then make sure that you can get something that’s not only validated, but it serves a purpose with regards to environmental characteristics or, you know, electrical characteristics where it’s being used in. Is it a harsh environment? And also different angles for different connectors, different orientations. You know, like you can go and buy a straight one, but then you’re going to have a big service loop on there when a right angle one ordered, you know, six or eight weeks ahead of time would be able to enable you to, to utilize space.

[00:12:07.380] – Stephen Mott, guest

You know, there’s always a lot of space constraints in, in, in some applications. So that, that there’s, that there’s a lot of factors that, that come into selecting the appropriate cable. So I just go and buy one, not like off the shelf and plug it in. It’s, let’s hope she works, you know, so yeah.

[00:12:24.180] – Josh Eastburn, host

But so generally you’re advising people to just start, thinking earlier about how you’re going to handle.

[00:12:30.280] – Stephen Mott, guest

Absolutely, right. Yes. Then there’s no rush at the end.

[00:12:35.000] – Josh Eastburn, host

Hey, a quick break to thank today’s sponsor. MVTEC’s machine vision software, HALCON powers demanding applications in industries like electronics and logistics with deep learning and 3D vision built in. MERLIC makes it possible to set up machine vision without coding, ideal for fast prototyping as well as production use. Increase your productivity, reduce costs, and learn more about their upcoming software releases at mvtec.com/mvpro. That’s mvtec.com/mvpro. And now back to the interview.

[00:13:08.620] – Josh Eastburn, host

You don’t just do cables, if I understand right, also enclosures, those things?

[00:13:13.020] – Stephen Mott, guest

Well, yes. So cables, enclosures for cameras, the associated mounting hardware for those enclosures. And also associated hardware for smart cameras that are used in automotive applications. So anything that interconnects within an actual vision system from just the basic cable to the actual surface-decimated hardware and not just standard. We’ve designed some really customized hardware bracketing, et cetera, for rigorous demanding applications.

[00:13:50.750] – Josh Eastburn, host

And I’m interested to dig into that also. What are some of the unique requirements you would say machine vision imposes on you as a supplier? How does it maybe differ from some of the other industries that you support?

[00:14:03.390] – Stephen Mott, guest

Well, a lot of it is primarily like a point to point kind of reference. Does this pass the signal from point A to point B? Okay, yes, we receive it. Okay, it’s all good. Two thumbs up. Vision is like, okay, sure, you can, you got the signal, but what’s, what’s the integrity of that signal? You know, it’s like, it’s like, over a period of time, you might get, it’s like, how does that degrade? You know, like, is that, is that movement? What kind of, once again, what kind of environment is this being used in? Is it in a continuous movement? Is it used on a robotic arm? When do you expect that, that cable to, to reach its, it’s breaking point where it no longer functions the way we’re supposed to. So we’ve done in-house flex testing and we’re able to tell customers, so okay, based upon these parameters, you’re going to use this cable, then you can expect to have some downtime after 5 million cycles or five months or 10 months, depending on the amount of cycles that you’re implementing in your vision system. So that’s another you know, like add on points where I provide customers like, yeah, we’re going to need to schedule maintenance in about 10 months, you know, based upon what CEI 2Connect sees as its frailties.

[00:15:18.910] – Stephen Mott, guest

Okay, great. So, and then, you know, if you look at, you know, vacuum requirements or  cleaner requirements, I’d be okay, that’s every different application brings in another nuance into the requirements, you know, so there’s always a demand for something strange, something that doesn’t fit into the standard lane of using cables. Now that we’re part of 2Connect, we’ve got, you know, great designs around the world. So it’s like, you know, we roll the whole company. It’s like, okay, let’s provide this a world class solution to this.

[00:15:55.760] – Josh Eastburn, host

Talk more about that. I was reading on the Component Express website about the acquisition by 2Connect, which I think happened maybe three years back. Does that sound right? Okay.

[00:16:07.310] – Stephen Mott, guest

Yeah.

[00:16:07.550] – Josh Eastburn, host

Tell me why that’s important for CEI and for your customers. What difference does that make?

[00:16:13.150] – Stephen Mott, guest

Well, you know, even though we had a geographical presence, we didn’t have dedicated manufacturing locations around the world. We had one in Asia, one in the US. Now we have the European dedicated manufacturing location in Europe. To be able to provide cables ordered by European customers, made and shipped within Europe. So what we call ‘in the region for the region’, right? So that being part of now the 2Connect Group has allowed us to now offer better service, better delivery, better pricing. Customers don’t have to pay for international freight charges and tariffs and and incoming duties or one another when it’s made in Europe for you. So, you know, whether it be North America, whether it be Asia, whether it be Europe, we’re able to provide that customer service around the clock.

[00:17:09.820] – Josh Eastburn, host

You also mentioned tariffs in there and how the ‘in the region for the region approach’ lets you adapt to that. How are you seeing that affect the vision industry in North America and abroad?

[00:17:24.160] – Stephen Mott, guest

Well, now that there’s multiple layers of tariffs, it has actually having customs clearers delays to customers within North America. That’s, that’s become a little bit of a problem because now you’ve got different layers of tariffs and customs is taking longer. And, you know, for just courier shipments and ocean shipments, everything is really under a microscope and, and really dug deep into and it’s causing some delays. But whether it’s produced in Europe or within Asia and a drop ship to various parts of the world, tariffs haven’t affected that. It’s only primarily what’s coming into North America that you’ve got these multiple layers of requirements or designations or classifications that need to be met. To, to make it flow through simply. And, and as that becomes more streamlined, as people get used to, to this, it’s only, you know, like a, a month or two or three old, you know, it’s like once, once everybody, everybody becomes more accustomed to the process and the way it has to happen, it’s like, okay, this, this cable is classified this, this and this materials using the cables, do the classification now, just click, click, click, boom, done. So it says, no, we need all of this and need to break down. It’s like, so that and that initial flow through was really starting to slow the delivery process down.

[00:18:50.130] – Josh Eastburn, host

Yeah, definitely. I remember being in a similar situation during COVID and yeah, I mean, I’m sure you experienced some of that as well. We’ve talked about cabling and enclosures and other types of components. What are some of the, let’s say the highlights of your product line? What are some things that people might come to you specifically for that they wouldn’t find from other suppliers?

[00:19:11.330] – Stephen Mott, guest

Well, you know, CEI’s cable configurator, on the website, has always been a big winner for us. Because people, engineers, end users, and the like can go to our website and they can choose exactly what they want versus a catalog house or somebody that just has pictures of a cable on the website. You’re able to follow the steps and intrinsically configure everything that you need. It’s like, you know, you can go back and forth. It’s like, click on that one. It’s like, no, don’t want that one. How about this one? That’ll work. All right. So 3D image. Will this fit in? Yes, it will. Bang. Okay, great. Configure the part number finished. Send the RFQ off for quoting purposes, you know, so, and then when you’re, when you’re talking to customers, that’s okay. So what, what is it that you’re trying to do? What range you choose this particular part number? Why don’t we go to the website and let’s walk through what you’re actually configured? It’s like, okay, you connect, you choose connector A. It’s like, well, why did you choose this cable type for, you know, to go in the middle?

[00:20:17.630] – Stephen Mott, guest

It’s like, well, my application is this. Well, this one might be better suited. So it’s a valuable tool to be able to converse directly with the customer and set that comfort level at the same time as like helping them choose the appropriate for what is the most correct cable for that particular application. So that’s, that’s been invaluable over the years. It’s, it’s been, it’s been copied  and then tried, but it still comes back to that CEI configurates.

[00:20:47.270] – Josh Eastburn, host

So really we were talking about specialty configurations. That’s, that’s especially what people are going to be looking at or looking for from Components Express.

[00:20:55.430] – Stephen Mott, guest

Right. Right. So variations of standards. You know, it’s like, okay, I see that you don’t have this, but can you do this? Yes, absolutely. You might, there might be an NRE. What’s, what’s the scope of your business model here? What do you anticipate? It’s like, okay, because we have these two orientations, but you want the one that’s kind of like in the middle. You want the 45 degree versus the 90 or the 180. It’s like, so once again, having that conversation while you’re on the website is, and enrolling the customer, it’s like getting every last little bit of information  out of what you’ve got there. It’s like, okay, fine. Now let me get you that NRE and then let’s go forward from here.

[00:21:39.310] – Josh Eastburn, host

Can you explain what an NRE is?

[00:21:41.310] – Stephen Mott, guest

Non-Recurring Engineering charge.

[00:21:43.470] – Josh Eastburn, host

So this is what we call a one off, that one-time request. Is that right?

[00:21:47.710] – Stephen Mott, guest

Yes, right. Yes, absolutely. And if a customer’s scope of business or what they think that this might be in one to two years or the next 18 months or whatever. It’s like, okay, it does this, does this work for you? Okay, here it is. Okay, let’s move forward. Okay. So now we’ve got, now we’ve got the agreement. Let’s go into the design. Right. And then let’s go into the, the pooling stage and it’s like, okay, let’s go into the, the prototyping stage. And then walk through the whole thing. It’s like, okay, any changes needed? No. Okay, approval done, when’s production?

[00:22:23.710] – Josh Eastburn, host

So you’re, so you’re pretty active, it sounds like in supporting customers who are in this situation where they need this particular type of cable that they’re not going to find anywhere else. And then you’re working with them to design and manufacture them. Tell me about some of the standard product lines that you have. I know of a few of them. I don’t want to get them wrong. So maybe you can tell us what some of those are.

[00:22:46.830] – Stephen Mott, guest

Well, if you look at the, Starting from the top, you’ve got, you know, GigE, which is Gigabit Ethernet. We’ve got complete offering there, you know, 20 different profiles of all different types. And then we go into the Camera Link. You know, Camera Link is still like a big part of the CEI  business. And we’ve been a world leader in Camera Link because we set the bar. You know, we set the bar for validation and another people tried to try to catch up to us. You know, so that was, that was a very defining moment within the division standards committees. So it’s like, yeah, CEI is separate from us. Like you guys, everything needs to be validated to this, you know, so, and then you’ve got FireWire, which is, which is just like almost at, at the end of its life. It still has some legacy applications, but then you’ve got the higher speed ones, USB, which which can be simple yet complicated at the same time. Because once you go from USB 2 to USB 3, you’re increasing the speed by 10x. So once again, the connectorization, how you assemble, how you test, once again, it has to be a different validation suite for it.

[00:24:05.270] – Stephen Mott, guest

And then you move into the real high speed ones, CoaXpress and Camera Link HS. Once again, two vastly different, you know, connectorizations, cable applications, but still trying to achieve the same kind of throughput in any one particular application. So then we’ve raised our rate to the M12 of industrial. So that’s serving part of the industrial automation side, you know, not necessarily a vision type cable, but more along the power and automation applications.

[00:24:39.750] – Josh Eastburn, host

And tell me about your Bitmaxx series, because I’ve heard that referenced a few times in other literature from CEI 2Connect. I’m not clear on what the scope of that is.

[00:24:50.790] – Stephen Mott, guest

Okay, so Bitmaxx, what that does, it encompasses pre emphasis and equalization within the Ashore cable itself. Right. So you’re taking in the signal that’s coming from the camera. You’re equalizing it and then you’re sending it with pre emphasis back to the data acquisition card, whichever that happens to be, whichever division standard that happens to be in. So within that, there’s a dedicated PC board with components on there that essentially takes the signal, cleans it up, equalizes it, and then sends it back out again. In essence, it’s doubling the length of a particular cable that would be previously restricted to a standard cable being used at very, very high speeds. You’ve got length limitations. Bitmaxx enables customers to then double the length of that. So if you, so if the actual inspection cycle where the camera is located, if it’s in a very dirty environment, you’re able to get that 18 to 20 meters back to the PC that’s now in behind a glass cabinet or whatever. So it’s keeping it away. But still, we got that high speed throughput.

[00:26:07.060] – Josh Eastburn, host

Gotcha. So, okay, so, so longer lengths, but without a loss in signal integrity.

[00:26:12.340] – Stephen Mott, guest

Absolutely, yes. Okay, great.

[00:26:14.900] – Josh Eastburn, host

Great. Well, I think we’ve used our time pretty well here. Let me know if there’s anything that you wanted to cover that we didn’t cover. I’m really interested though, to just kind of ask what’s coming next for CEI big events, announcements on the horizon, or maybe if you just have some parting thoughts on where you’re seeing demand for new product offerings and what we might see from CEI in the future?

[00:26:38.250] – Stephen Mott, guest

I think the more that CEI’s visibility as part of the 2Connect group reaches around the world, I think that’s really getting the recognition out there that CEI by 2Connect is a world class, world standard manufacturing company. So we’ve still got the standard vision trade shows coming up next year where that automate show in Chicago or Vision Show, which is the, the world showcase of the vision in Stuttgart in, in October. And then, but also, we’ve got these other industries. We’re able to attend other trade shows, which we would might never have thought of before to maybe even attract business because it’s, it’s part of one of the other pillars within the 2Connect group. So, you know, branching out and just, Just seeing what’s out there that we would never have thought about before.

[00:27:36.470] – Josh Eastburn, host

And you mentioned defense as a big industry that you’re seeing a lot of growth in. And the other ones that you’re kind of keeping your eye on?

[00:27:46.470] – Stephen Mott, guest

Medical still has its ebbs and flows, as does semicon. When that is running full bore, Asia is running full bore.

[00:27:56.830] – Josh Eastburn, host

Any parting words of wisdom for the design engineers, the production managers out there?

[00:28:04.990] – Stephen Mott, guest

You know what? If you want system validation, CEI is the place to come to.

[00:28:09.710] – Josh Eastburn, host

There we go. Great. Thank you so much for your time, Steve. I’m glad we worked out all the kinks and we got to do this.

[00:28:18.110] – Josh Eastburn, host

Okay, that’s our episode for today. Thank you to Steve and Components Express by 2Connect. And a big thank you to MVTEC for making today’s episode possible. You’ll find links for both companies in the show notes.

[00:28:30.660] – Josh Eastburn, host

Believe it or not, we are approaching the close of the first year of the MVPro Podcast. And if you’ve been thinking about reaching out to us, now is the time to do it. Our waiting list is already reaching out into 2026. We’d love to hear about your unique experience with Machine Vision, whether that’s a special industry focus or a fantastic product. Please reach out. For MVPro Media, this is Josh Eastburn. Have a good day.

About your host