Electronics > Manufacturing & Assembly
Suggestions for a PCB automatic optical inspection machine.
procidaj:
Hello Everyone,
I am looking to purchase an AOI for PCB inspection. Its intended use is not for a production facility but more of a research facility, so it will definitely be low volume usage.
Currently I am looking at a NovaScope NS-1818 or a NS1818-AV. If anyone has any suggestions for an alternative or any experience using this piece of equipment id really appreciate it!
SMTech:
First things first, that is not an AOI. It doesn't even claim to be an AOI, its not even a comparator. It is a first article inspection aid, of some sort. Its clearly not as useful as a quins, which does no analysis, but alternates the images of each region between golden sample and UUT to help your brain. It makes no attempts at interpreting the image like the scanner based aoisystems might (these aren't AOI machines either as, like your camera the image is pure 2D top down which is less helpful than you might think). It is merely a robotic camera, better than nothing but not about to rock your world vs a magnifier or inspection camera with no robot.
I think you need to define a few things.
* What are you trying to inspect?
* What faults are you expecting to catch?
* What is your budget?
* What space do you have?
* Where are you?
There are any number of FAI machines, they cost anything between £10K and £25K, however around that 25K point you can buy an entry level 2D AOI such as the prey merlin https://ascinternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Prey-Merlin-AOI-2021-1-003.pdf. These use angled light sources to fake up a 3D interpretation of your solder fillets. As Far as I am concerned, its not AOI until it can do at least this, otherwise all it can catch is missing/skewed/shouldn't be there and wrong part if you're lucky.
For a little less than something like a Merlin, assuming you can get a decent price for shipping you could choose something direct from China.
Moving up the food chain, commercial low volume production models from MEK or Aleader or an entry level Mirtec. This bit of the market is interesting as most of them have actually abandoned 2D+angled light inspection and moved to 3D inspection. This helps you because it means people who have upgraded, might be selling their old AOI cheap. Here's a UK example https://www.shawline.co.uk/category.php?id_category=10 the benchtop Marantz in that picture is £4k, the Nordson is £13k but also risky as I understand if you wanted support, of any kind there's a massive "product registration" fee, this is not uncommon and something to look out for.
procidaj:
After rereading the quote from the company I see what you mean now about the First Article Inspection. Perhaps that's the recommendation that I am looking for.
To answer your questions though:
1. In house assembled printed circuit boards.
2. Missing components, tombstone caps and resistors, solder joints for through holes, and IC orientation would be the most the basic needs. Anything extra would be a bonus, I've seen photos of AOI machines that make a 3D image and can show if a pin is raised up on something like a HDMI connector.
3. We were quoted 25k for the NS-1818 and 40k for the NS-1818-AV which the only difference seems to be angle view cameras and red, green, and blue side lighting.
4. Space wise we dont need anything large. Like I said it will be used for low volume, probably less then 20 boards a week on average.
5. New York
Thank you for the information you already provided. The merlin link will be a good starting point for me to do some further research into this.
SMTech:
OK, so missing, skewed, polarity, case markings those are things you can catch with machines based around flatbed scanners and these should include software to automate and record the process. The most affordable and simple one I have come across and had demo'd is this one from AOI Systems http://www.aoisystems.com/Scanner-Based-FA-Inspector.html . AOI systems are a small Scottish team to my understanding, but spend a lot of time in the US. The other interesting option in this category is the AgnosPCB camera based system which can probably spot similar faults but purely based on comparison.
What these types of systems cannot do is any level of inspection of a solder joint as the flat image doesn't give the software any information as to how much solder is present. That is what the angled light would perhaps be trying to help you with on the 1818-AV but its still relying your monkey brain to decide good vs bad. To my mind the 1818 is way overpriced.
On 2D AOi systems like the Merlin, those colored lights at different angles are used to build up a histogram and from there an indication as to the 3D profile is derived. A totally flat unsoldered surface will be seen as bright white, a steep edge blue etc etc. MEK Powerspektor can add multiple cameras to this view to turn it into a 3D image. They call this "selective 3D" as its not that practical to deploy across an entire PCB and also not as useful as you might expect.
Some 3D systems deploy multiple angled cameras (e.g Yamaha) some use one or more lasers and some like Omron/Koh Yung use "Moiré interferometry" or phase shifting to try and mitigate things like shadowing that affect a pure vision based system. They are all true production systems and very expensive.
Jackster:
--- Quote from: SMTech on January 23, 2025, 02:24:32 pm ---OK, so missing, skewed, polarity, case markings those are things you can catch with machines based around flatbed scanners and these should include software to automate and record the process. The most affordable and simple one I have come across and had demo'd is this one from AOI Systems http://www.aoisystems.com/Scanner-Based-FA-Inspector.html . AOI systems are a small Scottish team to my understanding, but spend a lot of time in the US.
--- End quote ---
I was going to try one of these as I found a used one for cheap.
Called AOIsystems and asked if it was still supported and they said that any support for the machine, including software updates, would be £10,000.
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