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AOI Inspection
The full name of AOI is Automated Optical Inspection, which is an equipment used to inspect common defects encountered in welding production based on optical principle. AOI is a newly arisen testing technology, but develops rapidly. Many manufacturers have launched AOI testing equipment. During automated inspection, the machine automatically scans PCB through the camera, collects images, compares the tested welding spots with the qualified parameters in the database, checks out the defects on the PCB through image processing, and displays/marks the defects through the display or automatic signs for maintenance personnel to repair.
▶Why use AOI
With the rapid development of PCB products towards ultra-thin type, small parts, high density and fine pitch, the assembly density of components on circuit boards has increased, and PCB line width, spacing and bonding pads have become smaller and smaller, reaching micron level. Therefore, manual visual inspection can no longer meet the requirements.
In addition, people are easy to be fatigued and affected by emotion. Compared with manual visual inspection, machine vision equipment has higher stability, repeatability and higher accuracy.
Reduce the cost of staff training: the rate of staff turnover has been much higher than that of training a skilled staff.
Defect warning: prevent defects in the previous process. AOI equipment can be used in solder paste printing, in front of and in back of the furnace to intercept defective products in time through effective control by on-site personnel.
Reduce maintenance cost of PCBA: By applying AOI at different quality stations, real-time feedback information of the influence of manufacture procedure changes on quality can be obtained.
▶Advantages of USB 3.0 in AOI application
In AOI, cameras are used to capture and process images instead of human eyes. Among numerous solutions, USB3.0 is being selected by more and more manufacturers due to its advantages of high efficiency, convenience and low cost.
Category
Cable Length
Max. Rate
Real-time Capability
CPU Utilization
Plug and Play
Capture CardCost
Gige
100m
100 MB/s
Poor
High
No
High
USB 3.0
100m
350 MB/s
Good
Low
Yes
Low
Camera Link
10m
850 MB/s
Good
Low
No
Very High
▶Application of USB3.0 Vision High-Flex Hybrid AOC cable
USB3.0 Vision High-Flex Hybrid AOC cable is a high flexible active optical cable specially developed by Everpro for machine vision industry. On the basis of optical fiber as transmission medium, it integrates copper cable, adopts special BendRobust®high-strength bending-resistant fiber, multistrand ultra-fine special conductors, bulletproof high-strength nonmetallic strength members and ultra-soft wear-resistant insulating materials. In AOI application scenarios where the drag chain is required, it can not only supply power to camera equipment, but also ensure stable, effective and continuous operation of the system with its ultra-high flexibility and drag chain tests of performance over 10 million times.
▶Application Case: AOI Application in Photovoltaic Industry
In the fully automated production line, AOI automated inspection equipment is performing automatic sorting. The fully automated manipulator is performing sorting and loading of battery cells.
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Printing
Printing industry has the characteristics of wide printing width, high speed, high accuracy and assembly line work, which generally can not be met by manual inspection. Through machine vision technology, automatic and intelligent measurement, inspection and identification can be realized in the production process. USB3.0 vision inspection system with Everpro's USB3.0 Vision High-Flex Hybrid AOC cable has the advantages of high resolution, high frame speed, small size, long cable length and so on, which can realize the following inspection for printed products:
▶Color defect inspection (such as exposure inspection, light print inspection, color variation inspection, leaky white inspection, etc.); material defect inspection (such as hole inspection and foreign matter inspection);
▶Printing defect inspection(such as defect inspection, die-cut line inspection, ink fly inspection, exposure inspectionand printing registration deviation detection);
▶QRcode defect inspection(such as duplicate number inspection, offset inspection, mismatch inspection, etc.).
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Pharmacy
Pharmacy must comply with numerous international regulations. Therefore, 100% inspection need to be carried out during or after the production process to ensure high-quality products and complying with relevant laws and regulations. USB3.0 vision inspection system with Everpro's USB3.0 Vision High-Flex Hybrid AOC cable has the advantages of high resolution, high frame speed, small size, long cable length, no radiation, anti-interference performance and so on, which can meet various requirements of pharmacy industry, including:
▶Production flow control: for example, pill blister pack inspection, remove broken pills, pass the right pill snormally, and ensure all the pills in the blister packs are intact;
▶Quality control: for example, after the bottle is filled, measure whether the filling reaches the baseline;
▶Barcode inspection and QRcode recognition: read barcode, QR code or printed characters, and verify the label content and correct direction;
▶Production control: check whether package insert in each pill box is missing or the total number of produced drugs.
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Food Packaging
With the rapid development of packaging technology in food industry, production automation is increasing, and the requirements for quality and production efficiency are more and more strict. USB3.0 vision inspection system with Everpro's USB3.0 Vision High-Flex Hybrid AOC cable has the advantages of high resolution, high frame speed, small size, long cable length and so on, which can realize stable, continuous and reliable product inspection, overcome the shortcomings of manual inspection such as fatigue, individual difference and poor repeatability, and help enterprises improve product quality, increase production efficiency and reduce production costs, including:
▶Inspecting outer packing of boxed food: inspect outer packing of boxed foods (including inspecting whether the outer packaging is damaged, whether the label exists, whether the production date exists, etc.);
▶Inspecting liquid level and bottle cap defects of transparent bottled beverages: inspect liquid level of transparent bottled beverages to ensure the consistency of beverage filling; Inspect bottle cap packaging to eliminate defective products such as missing bottle caps and askew bottle caps;
▶Appearance inspection of canned beverage and food: inspect the quality of pull ring, date of production and serial number of canned beverage and food;
▶Inspecting outer packing of boxed beverage: inspect outer packaging of boxed beverage, for example, whether the straw exists, whether the straw jack is broken, etc;
▶Count over all packaging : count the overall packaging of bottled and boxed beverages to ensure the packaging quantity;
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Automobile Manufacturing
Automobile vision inspection is one of the earliest applications in machine vision industry. The requirements of automobile parts production and assembly are very strict. Machine vision is the most accurate inspection technology at present. USB3.0 vision inspection system with Everpro's USB3.0 Vision High-Flex Hybrid AOC cable has the advantages of high resolution, high frame speed, small size, long cable length, no radiation, anti-interference performance and so on, and can realize the following functions
▶Measure product size and judge according to product profile.
▶Inspect defects, such as obvious scratches, scuffing and defects on the products. According to the photos, it can determine whether the product has defect or not. With the application of camera technology, the higher the pixel, more accurate for the judgment of product defects.
▶Surface contamination inspection, if product surface is contaminated, it can be identified.
▶The integrity of the product can be inspected, regardless of whether the product has cracks or leakage.
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3C Inspection
3C electronic products have become an indispensable part of people's lives in new era. Especially, the huge demand space of the domestic mobile phone market makes the applications of machine vision inspection gradually increase in the mobile phone manufacturing industry. Relying on previous manual inspection can hardly meet the market requirements, which is easily affected by personal eyesight, emotion, fatigue, light and other factors. Furthermore, efficiency will be reduced and the quality standards will be uneven. USB3.0 vision inspection system with Everpro's USB3.0 Vision High-Flex Hybrid AOC cable has many advantages, such as high resolution, high frame speed, small size and long cable length, which is slowly replacing some hand labor. It not only ensures high quality and high efficiency of inspection, but also solves the problems of labor cost increasing and tight labor supply. At present, the appearance inspection of mobile phones includes screen printing effect, scratches on the product surface, screen defective pixels and so on.
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Somatosensory Application
With the development of VR and AR technologies, somatosensory devices such as Microsoft Kinect and Intel Realsense have been launched successively, and the software and applications developed by various devices have quickly entered all walks of life.Using somatosensory devices can get rid of the control of mouse and keyboard, and realize rapid communication with computers.Related applications also spread in various fields, mainly include games, education and medical treatment.
In some scenes of somatosensory application, distance has become the bottleneck that limits its further development. On the premise that wireless transmission is not realized, the scheme of adopting signal extension has become the unanimous choice.Using Everpro’s USB3.0 High-Flex Active Optical Cable to extend USB signal, can completely ensure effective and high-speed data transmission and improve user's experience.
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Smart Warehousing
Unmanned warehouse has always been the ultimate goal pursued by major e-commerce giants including Amazon, which can greatly reduce labor costs, improve efficiency by robots and speed up the normal circulation of internal goods.To achieve this goal, robot arm need to be able to pick out single and multiple items from a pile of items as accurately and quickly as human hand, in the meantime, does not damage other items. and it is necessary for a number of technologies such as machine vision, 3D perception and motion control to cooperate seamlessly. It needs the seamless cooperation of machine vision, 3D perception, motion control and many other technologies. In order to speed up the arrival of the era of “unmanned warehouse”, Amazon has publicly held Amazon Picking Challenge every year since 2015.
In this application scenario, machine vision and 3D perception involves cameras and sensors. As a universal data transmission interface, USB 3.0 has transmission bandwidth of 5Gbps and supports the transmission of high-definition images and control signals, which is preferred by more and more system schemes. With its features of supporting long distance transmission and ultra flexibility, Everpro’s USB3.0 High-Flex Active Optical Cable has become the preferred cable for matching cameras and sensors in such applications.
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3D Scanning
In order to ensure the perfect presentation of high-quality data, some of 3D scanning machines generally adopt high-definition industrial cameras. Compared withcommon gigabit network standard, USB3.0 industrial cameras with 5G high bandwidth has great advantages. However, due to the limited transmission distance of common USB 3.0 copper wire and the inability to meet the requirements of robot arm for ultra-soft cable, this scheme cannot be widely adopted. With the launch of Everpro's new generation USB3.0 High-Flex Active Optical Cable, the above problems have been completely solved, and USB 3.0 cameras can be further developed and applied in 3D scanning.