Ben, I am familiar with the Agilent family of ICT, AOI, and X-ray Laminography systems. The three systems, although each expensive in their own right, are not mutually exclusive nor totally redundant in test coverage. All three are complimentry and many test plans include two of the three and even all three based on the shop's capabilities, the product requirements, and ultimately what degree of coverage the customer needs and what level of cost the customer is willing to bear. ICT tests the board for electrical opens and shorts, checks analog values of nets with set tolerances where applicable, can validate checksums of programmables (I think?), and can program eeproms (I'm sure there's more but these are the biggies). ICT does not validate product functionality or performance. There is some advanced features such as test jet, JTAG, and boundary scan that can help when conventional ICT access for parts of the board is nonexistant. The growth of X-ray laminography has gained popularity for a few reasons. Although still expensive relative to the other two systems mentioned above, the cost of ownership of 5DX has reduced considerably over the last 5 years or so primarily due to increased speeds of the system, better programming tools which have substantially reduced programming develpoment time, complexity, and cost, and longer lasting x-ray tubes. I don't think the machines themselves have got much less expensive. In some people's minds (not necessarily mine), the proliferation of BGA components begs an automated x-ray inspection solution. Laminography paints a more complete picture about what is going on at the board/ball interface than 2D x-ray but is still not 100% definitive (i.e. will not detect a collapsed ball on a nonsolderable pad). Due to the ever increasing trends of greater circuit density and node count ICT test coverage is shrinking. 5DX (and AOI) is a means to increase test coverage. RF products as a family are a classic example of products which have poor test coverage where 5DX can provide valuable process feedback to correct manufacturing problems and of course detect failures that are reworked prior to shipment. Not everyone can afford 5DX and obviously the industry has built billions of assemblies through the years without it. It is my humble opinion that the main reason you design 5DX into your test plan is to meet stringent product reliability requirements and/or to compensate for poor ICT coverage. ICT will tell you that your circuit is wired up but it won't tell you if you have low volume joints on your QFP's or BGA's that may result in field failures. Another benefit to the manufacturer is that 5DX can provide "process indicator" feedback up your manufacturing line by setting solder joint thresholds inside workmanship standards but just outside of preferred limits, just like the IPC 610's "Acceptable", "Process Indicator", and "Rejectable" criteria system. Since I'm writing a book here anyway......I know you didn't ask about AOI but I can't help myself :) . AOI of course can only provide a line-of-sight inspection. It has the benfit of being able to provide manufacturing quality data up the line earlier in the process than the other two. Depending on your floor's flows there could only be minutes between AOI and 5DX/ICT or it could be hours or even days. Most AOI systems provide the benefit of being able to actually check part marks and find misloaded parts (primarily actives), backwards parts, misplaced parts, and missing parts. Many are selling their AOI system's solder joint inspection capability but it certainly is not as robust as the 5DX's and can't deal with array packages and SOJ/PLCC's where the joints are obscured by the package. Depending on the AOI machine and where you place it in your line you likely won't be looking at through hole devices and joints with AOI where 5DX looks at everything. Agilent publishes a really nice graphic that shows three overlapping/interlocking rings and the fault coverage each of the three systems offers. It's a nice way to visualize how the systems compliment each other and where they overlap each other. One thing that would make their graphic more useful is if they identified the reliability risk natured faults versus the purely functional related faults but you can likely figure this out when you see the graphic (i.e. low and no volume solder joints). Contact your friendly local Agilent salesman for this slide. Good Luck, Glenn Woodhouse ------------------- Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 14:43:17 -0500 From: "Royal, Ben" <[log in to unmask]> Subject: 5DX vs. ICT I am a newbie to the SMT world and would appreciate some assistance on a question that came up this afternoon. I hope I get the question right; I used to build rockets. One of our customers wanted to know if we had any experience re: which is better - a in-line 5DX-to-FCT process or an ICT-to-FCT process. Not a lot of response around the table from the more experience hands. I assume "which is better" means which process is a more efficient inspection setup for locating nonconformances. Would appreciate any comments. Now if you would excuse me, I am going out on the floor to find a 5DX and figure out what the devil that is. Ben Royal --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------