Hi all!

Bringing up the topic of AOI again. Read the Glenn Woodhouse summary (which I
think was GREAT by the way) that Daan reposted about the state of the
technology, had a fellow engineer that I work with attend a session at APEX
about AOI, and it seems that things may have become a bit cheaper, but as far
as using AOI for solder joint evaluation, there's still much to be desired...

The situation here is that there is some pressure from those above to get a
system in here that will be a fool-proof method to put a piece of equipment
in place that will eliminate the need for human inspection.

My take on it is that one focuses on making sure that the process is right
from the beginning, and then you don't need to spend a bunch of money on
automated inspection equipment, or depend on humans to inspect each and every
solder joint.

The reason I say that is because we are a low volume, high part number shop.
We may have ongoing business for years, but it maybe 10 assemblies a
month...what we consider high volume is a run of 250 assemblies per work
order...hehehe.

I just have the opinion that spending the big bucks for the AOI equipment
doesn't make a whole lot of sense in our situation...we'll be tweeking
programs during the run and probably won't have all the false calls, or
missed defects ironed-out by the time the work order is built...then a month
or two later on the same assembly, you go through the same drill again...

Any thoughts on this?

-Steve Gregory-

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