Phillips Medisize – Solder Inspection Machine
Our customer had been having issues with medical pump cases that did not have good solder joints making it through their manufacturing process and getting to their customer.
The operators were responsible to do a visual inspection of the solder joints to assure that they were acceptable. The problem was that it was very difficult for the operators to visually judge the solder joint to make sure that it met the specification. So, our customer reached out to us to develop a system that would inspect for the 270-degrees of coverage and 75% land area wetting required on the solder joints so that the operators were not making quality decisions based on what they were seeing. Working with Keyence and our customer we were able to find the best solution for inspecting the solder joints utilizing Keyence’s 3D vision inspection system.
An operator loads a case into the dial on the machine, a 3D vision inspection system then takes a 3D image of the solder joints and inspects them for proper coverage and wetting. Once the case has been inspected the machine records the results. After the case is inspected, a SCARA robot removes the case from the dial using a Millibar vacuum gripper and will either place it in a reject location or onto a conveyor based on the inspection results. The cases placed onto the conveyor are fed out to another operator that packs them for shipping.
On the HMI our customer can view the number of each failures the machine has recorded along with good parts processed. They are also able to set the number of consecutive failures the machine can have before the machine stops and alarms.
The machine features an Allen-Bradley control system, a Keyence safety system, a Keyence 3D vision inspection system, an Epson T3 SCARA robot and a Dorner conveyor.
Keyence’s XT-024 3D inspection camera provides this machine with the precision and accuracy required to inspect the quality of solder connections on a PCB. Parts are introduced to the camera on a servo-driven rotary table and are dispositioned by an EPSON T3 SCARA robot. The equipment checks multiple positions on the board to ensure that solder has created an adequate connection between the pads and the leads.
