Product category: Electronics Manufacturing Machinery and Materials
News Release from: Metcal | Subject: VPI-1000
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 10 June 2002
Fresh look at optical inspection
The VPI-1000 optical inspection system is new, from the ground up, adding features and flexibility to traditional optical inspection while offering customers an economical inspection solution
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The innovative VPI-1000 optical inspection system is new, from the ground up, adding features and flexibility to traditional optical inspection while offering customers an economical inspection solution. Sleek and ergonomically designed, the VPI-1000 optical inspection system offers an on-screen magnification range of 100x to 175x and can easily inspect under components with a standoff as low as 0.05mm.
A specially designed optical tip requires just a 1.1mm distance between components to achieve optimum inspection.
Unique to the VPI-1000 optical inspection system is the patent-pending mirrored tip/lens interface.
With this exclusive Metcal design, operators can look under BGA, CSP, LGA etc, packages in spite of low standoff heights.
This capability is ideal for mobile phone production and medical devices as both markets are focused on smaller and smaller tolerances, less available board real estate and lower profiles.
The special tips are disposable and cost less to replace than other inspection systems.
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Moreover, VPI-1000 optical inspection system tips are more resilient and less brittle than traditional tips, and with proper use offer a longer lifespan.
Central to the VPI-1000 optical inspection system's capabilities is Metcal's articulating lens, which rotates 90 degrees (left/right) for easier inspection of interior rows and features an angle swing of 5 degrees (up/down) for closer inspection of top and bottom connections.
With a slight turn of the lens adjustment ring, the operator can move through the underside of the component to check for bridging, cold solder joints, open circuits, excess flux, contamination and other process-related failures that X-ray inspection systems cannot easily detect without highly educated and technical interpretation.
The VPI-1000 Optical Inspection System floods the underside of the component with bright-white metal halide light that replicates natural daylight, enhances the colour rendering and produces sharp, clear, crisp images on the system's hi-resolution flat screen colour monitor.
Completing the system is a 0.5in CCD camera, which accounts for the system's compact size and a high-resolution flat LCD monitor that frees bench space.
An optional software package includes measurement and process analysis, multi-focusing and image enhancement and a specially designed visual defect diagnostic program.
"Without sounding like the usual market-speak, the VPI-1000 raises the bar for BGA optical inspection systems", explained Michael Gouldsmith, CEO of Metcal.
"We've been able to increase functionality while substantially lowering cost, which is no simple matter.
The result is optical inspection that makes industry sense.
Small to medium volume manufacturers can now add BGA inspection capabilities without the prohibitive expense of X-ray.
High volume houses can now supplement X-ray with optical inspection for optimum process control, ultimate quality and improved traceability".
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