Visual inspection of PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards) is a crucial quality control process in electronics manufacturing. It involves a thorough examination of the board, to identify any defects or imperfections that may affect its functionality.
Why is Visual Inspection Important?
- Early Defect Detection: Visual inspection helps catch errors early in the production process, preventing costly rework or product failures later on.
- Ensuring Quality and Reliability: It verifies that the PCB meets design specifications and industry standards, guaranteeing its quality and reliability.
- Compliance with Standards: It helps ensure compliance with industry standards such as IPC-A-610, which sets acceptability criteria for electronic assemblies.
Inspectors typically look for a variety of potential defects, including:
- Component Placement:
- Misaligned components
- Incorrectly oriented components
- Missing components
- Soldering Issues:
- Solder bridges (unintended connections between solder joints)
- Insufficient solder
- Excess solder
- Cold solder joints (poor connections due to inadequate heating)
- Solder balls (small spheres of solder stuck to the board)
- Board Defects:
- Scratches or damage to the board surface
- Cracks or delamination in the board material
- Contamination or foreign material on the board
- Incorrect board dimensions or thickness
- Other Issues:
- Damaged or bent component leads
- Incorrect markings or labelling
- Flux residue
The PCB industry continues to adopt increasingly higher levels of integration and thereby, achieves greater component density. This translates to a reduced tolerance on PCB assembly which as a consequence has to become tighter.
Present-day electronic circuits are assembled with very small-footprint components, some as small as 0.2 to 0.1 mm. Viewing such components require high magnification inspection systems but at an affordable cost.
There is a pressing need for reliable and accurate visual inspection of PCBs.
What is Nulinescope Visual Inspection System?
Nuline made a revolutionary breakthrough in this field of inspection systems when it designed and developed a low-cost visual inspection system for easy viewing of electronic circuit boards – NULINESCOPE.
Nulinescope is a monocular, continuous zooming, optical inspection system with a high definition colour CCD camera and TV system together.
With a high working distance and wide field of view, there is an exceedingly high definition output. A substantial advantage over other run-of-the-mill microscope inspection systems is that there is minimal eye-strain in the Nulinescope enabling faster and simpler inspection.
Nulinescope offers both vertical and 45 degree slant (3D) viewing of objects.
The Nulinescope offers magnification up to 100x and the images can be captured on a computer by using the USB cable provided. The unit is fully integrated for line inspection as well as quality checking. All this at a fraction of the cost of its counterparts in the market today.
Where can Nulinescope Visual Inspection Systems be used?
- PCB Inspection
- Soldering
- Cellphone Repair
- Textile Fabric Inspection
- Jewellery Inspection
Advantages of Nulinescope Visual Inspection System
- HIGH PERFORMANCE MICROSCOPE
- 3D VIEW OPTION
- HIGH RESOLUTION VGA/4K CAMERA
- MAGNIFICATION: 10x to 100x
- CLEAR DISTORTION FREE IMAGES
- ZERO GLARE
- LCD-TFT/EXTERNAL MONITOR DISPLAY
- VARIABLE INTENSITY LED LIGHT
Technical Specification of Nulinescope Visual Inspection Systems
HDMI-360 Visual Inspection System Specification:
Camera:
Panasonic 1/8 inch sensor
12 Million effective pixels | 1920×1080@60fps | 3840×2160@30fps
UI menu and mouse control
Micro-SD Slot, USB 3.0, HDMI and UVC ports
Lighting:
72 LEDs for true colour viewing
Variable intensity- 4 zone control
Color temperature: 6000K
Luminance:>12000mcd
Lens:
Variable magnification and focus
Adjustable z-depth
High quality with low distortion
15x -150x magnification range
Unique 45 degree view with 360 degree rotation
Conventional inspection systems only offer a 2D view of components. The unique 45-degree mechanism in the Nulinescope series offers a 3D/360 view of objects allows for easy inspection of very fine pitch SMD for faults, breaks in connections, solder shorts, etc
Advanced labelling features:
Accurately measure point coordinates, cross lines, coordinate systems, text annotations and more
Advanced measurement tools:
Line and curve length, area, 2 & 3 point circle, concentric circles
NLS-M2 Visual Inspection System Specification:
Camera:
Menu selection
Resolution up to 1080p
Auto/Manual Intensity
VGA & USB interface
Lighting:
Variable intensity with knob control.
Ring LED allows for true color view.
Lens:
Variable magnification and focus
Adjustable z-depth
7x to 70x magnification range
