Solder joint inspection system and method

摘要: BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Automated inspection of solder joints, especially those used on printed circuit boards, has become in creasingly important with the proliferation of automatic electronic assembly technology. Human visual inspec tion is becoming less cost effective and more unreliable because of the time consuming microscopic inspection required for the typically thousands of solder joints per board. A primary feature of solder joint quality is the shape of the joint surface. Therefore the ability to auto mate the measurement of solder joint shapes and detect defects through shape is a signi? cant requirement of a fully automated system. Current progress toward auto mated inspection includes development of optical non contact inspection systems capable of very accurate measurements but these systems are fairly complex. The pending patent application referenced in the CROSS-REFERENCE TO …