First Board Inspection

Whatever the size of a production batch, it’s important to inspect the first board coming from the pick n place machine before it moves to the reflow oven.

This is to ensure that the setup and function of the Pick & Place machine is correct, if any errors are found the setup can be modified and the board repopulated and check again.

Watch the Video – First Board Inspection

Script – First Board Inspection

Whatever the size of a production batch, it’s important to inspect the first board coming from the pick n place machine before it moves to the reflow oven.

To help our operators with this task we developed a propriety system we call PIXpect.

We take a high resolution picture from the assembled side and load it to our production follow-up system.

In the PIXpect image the operator can see the components on the board aligned all in the same way with the same rotation,together with the information we derived from the CAD data and BOM list.

During this procedure we check for:

• Missing components
• Components where the marking on the part does not correspond with the marking information we have in our system.
• Eventual mismatched between components placed and reference designation.
• Orientation of the parts
• Elements that should not be on the board, such as dust particles, misplaced components, etc.

When problems are detected, the pasting operator, SMD or CAM operator are informed.

This way necessary adjustments can be made before starting the reflow process. When no problems are detected, or all issues solved, the production can continue