Improved Productivity With High-Speed Imaging for Printed Circuit Board Applications in Electronics Assembly

Abstract

Abstract. Machine vision inspections need to go through complex surface textures, part deviations/curvatures, nonuniform lighting, highly reflective surfaces, and unpredictable defects, which introduce image quality issues leading to serious inspection challenges. Machine vision systems struggle to appreciate part variability and deviation due to rotation, scaling, and image distortion when it comes to locating distinct features on very similar parts. All these factors combined make it difficult for vision systems to program and work efficiently. This newly offered vision package has improved camera optics with a large field of view (FOV) illumination, providing higher resolution images for better dot placement along with a reduction in cycle time. This includes advanced electronics like a higher resolution camera, better on/off-axis lighting to maintain uniform lighting across the full field of view. Maintaining the same pixel count per millimeter could be challenging when shifting to a higher resolution camera with no image distortion, but that is achievable with proper camera lens and lighting architecture. A digital camera is used to capture and transmit images to the image controller to have them processed while the illuminator illuminates the features which get reflected to the camera. New capabilities help to address the vision challenges across densely packed components in single field of view, high-speed imaging (speed of acquisition), inspection capability, and applications involving shiny, reflective, or glossy parts. These capabilities help to capture a single image in a bigger camera FOV to process multiple features in the same region of interest (ROI). This eliminates the number of gantry moves, settle time waits, and image acquisitions to substantially reduce the vision processing time, leading to faster product throughput.