Automatic Visual Inspection: Let’s Know

Manufacturing and quality control are becoming mutually exclusive terms. Today's businesses try to meet the highest quality requirements while maintaining maximum production capacity. Hence, gradually automation has become an inevitable part of it, while automatic visual inspection turned out to be one of the most known among others.

For quality control reasons, automatic visual inspection comprises inspecting products as they go down the production line. The many pieces of machinery at a manufacturing facility, including storage tanks, pressure vessels, pipes, and other equipment, may also be inspected visually from the inside and outside. Manufacturers can achieve optimum production capacity while guaranteeing regulatory compliance by installing automatic visual inspection systems.

Automatic Visual Inspection & AOI

Automatic visual inspection of PCBs is known as automated optical inspection (AOI). Because it is a non-contact test method, it is frequently employed in the production process. It is used in many stages throughout the manufacturing process such as solder paste inspection (SPI), bare board inspection, pre- and post-reflow stages, and other stages of the process.

A typical AOI system includes several light sources, numerous cameras, and maybe even video cameras. Several light sources from various perspectives illuminate a PCB, and the cameras take photos or movies to produce a complete image for analysis.

At several phases of the production process, AOI is helpful. It performs well to inspect solder paste, bare circuit boards, pre-reflow, and post-reflow. Each of these steps has the potential to create design flaws in PCB boards, and AOI aids in identifying these flaws before the production of a defective board continues.

Automatic Visual Inspection Alternatives

Optical inspection has expanded significantly during the past few decades in the PCB sector. It currently plays a significant part in the production process. The majority of manufacturers are now reporting board problems using AOI equipment. On the other hand, automatic visual inspection, or AVI is developing quickly but is still not very common in the sector.

While AOI and AVI machines have various types and functionalities, they operate on very similar principles. The foundation of many AVI technologies is AOI. To achieve the inspection aim, AOI and AVI can be combined. Hence, as an alternative, you may consider the AOI system for your inspection process.

Conclusion

Machine vision is simplifying our lives by enabling anything from picture searches on Google to sophisticated industrial systems that guarantee product quality. And it's feasible that very soon, much of the work done for visual quality assessment will be done by machines, freeing up humans to work on more complex duties.

Shenzhen JT Automation Equipment is one of China's leading experts in automatic visual inspection. If you need any help, you can always contact us to clear your doubt. Our experts would be happy to help.