The Inspectron: An Automatic Optical Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Inspector

William A. Bentley

doi:10.1117/12.965608

4 December 1979 The Inspectron: An Automatic Optical Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Inspector

William A. Bentley

Proceedings Volume 0201, Optical Pattern Recognition; (1979) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.965608
Event: 23rd Annual Technical Symposium, 1979, San Diego, United States

Abstract

The Inspectron is an instrument which will perform an automatic optical inspection of the etched circuitry on the individual layers of a multilayer printed circuit board. The concept of this instrument is unique in that it does not compare the PCB under test with a master or with computer-stored data. Instead, as the board is optically scanned, a small area is re-imaged onto a detector array. The detector signals, after digitization, are fed into high-speed logic circuitry which is programmed to distinguish between the appearance of a good board and an error. An 8 x 10 inch board can be inspected for line width, line spacing, line breaks, excess copper, and voids in about a minute. The Inspectron can also inspect pads for completeness and ground planes for shorts.

Citation Download Citation

William A. Bentley "The Inspectron: An Automatic Optical Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Inspector", Proc. SPIE 0201, Optical Pattern Recognition, (4 December 1979); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.965608

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