I currently use 3 different AOI pieces of equipment at my factory.
1. Photon Dynamics....Company no longer supports
2. Agilent SJ-50
3. Orbotech

   The Agilents were in house first and have met our requirments for
coverage on the following:
    Presence and Absence, Polarity, bridging, solder joint
(sufficient/insufficient) and Coplainarity to a point. (This system is 2d
and catches issues by noting solderjoint irregularity.

    The Orbotech system uses multiple cameras and will be able to do a more
thorough job on coplainarity.  Shadowing comes into play with angled
cameras but with the type of lighting that has been shown on the Orbotech I
have not seen this elevate to an issue. We have also put their system
through its paces on Paste inspection and it has excelled in this area.

   Both the Agilent and the Orbotech allow for teaching in a short period
of time compared to other pieces of equipment I have used. The steps needed
to teach the components are user friendly through each of their software
settings.

    Please consider the following. Whichever way you decide to go you need
to ask the companies where they are on a repeatable and dependable OCV/OCR
for component value validation.

     I have seen applications from each company but they are both expanding
in their R and D.  Consider this a return on investment.

     The reason we have a Photon Dynamics in house is due to its OCV
capabilites.  I can take a PCB that usually takes an individual 4 hours to
complete an First Article inspection and the machine allows me to cut this
to less than 2 hours the first time and the next time this PCB is set up
FAI can be completed in a matter of minutes.

    A new machine that does as well as an Orbotech or Agilent on component
presence/absence, bridge detect, solderjoint and polarity and also may be
used for component ID could pay for itself in uptime in a short period
depending upon how often you set up on builds and the complexity required
to complete an FAI.

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