Hello Sibbe, Thank you for posting your questions.
There are a few approaches to AOI with the majority being program driven. There are a couple of systems that are simply comparative in that you use the system to compare a golden board to others that you wish to “inspect”. This may be a good first step into Optical Inspection, but they are very unreliable and very operator intensive.
The next step up from there is the systems at the mid range of the market that provide adequate inspection by way of pattern matching as the primary form of Optical Inspection. These systems are very good at post placement, pre re-flow inspection, but fall short at solder joint or lifted lead inspection. The downside to the pattern match systems are the usually high false failure rates and limited post-reflow solder inspection. Programming time for these systems is usually under an hour, but the debug time could last for hours or days depending on your component mix.
The High End AOI systems are very heavy into Algorithm based inspection. These systems are typically very programming intensive with the exception of a couple. Programming time can take anywhere from 2.5 hours (Complete program and Debug) to 1 week depending on the complexity of the assembly being programmed. These systems provide superior defect coverage with measurement capabilities and are typically the most reliable.
Omron AOI systems are a great blend of the Mid-Range systems’ ease of use, ease of programming and price point, and the High End Inspection Capabilities of our Algorithm based inspection method. Our programming is very user friendly and typically takes 2 to 3 hours to complete, debug included, which sets up apart from most of the other High End AOI systems on the market. We innovated AOI 25 years ago and are world leaders today.
If you have any more specific questions or would like to discuss further, please contact me at david.upton@omron.com.
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