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The Industrial Inspection System for Board Implementation VARIR, Developed by Sony

Sony PS2
Sony PlayStation 2 - inspected by VARIR using HALCON
Sony EMCS Corporation Kohda TEC is the leading manufacturer of electronic boards inspection systems in the world, and part of Sony, Japan.

With products becoming more and more compact and lightweight the production process of electronic circuit board nowadays needs a much higher density implementation. VARIR (Visual Accuracy Reject Inspection Robot) - the inspection system for electronic circuits boards - was developed to fulfill this market demand. Here, the name VARIR expresses that it works as a barrier, which can prevent defective circuit boards from flowing out.

Screenshots
Inspection screenshots

HALCON applied as machine vision tool

The purpose of VARIR is to guarantee the best quality for the production process. However, it is not only developed as a board inspection system but also as a core machine, which can fulfill various requirements. Sony EMCS Corporation Kohda TEC thus instructed their laboratory to select the most suitable image-processing engine for the development. Their summary says:
"The reasons why we selected HALCON finally are as follows:
  1. HALCON has powerful development tools.
  2. HALCON can directly generate C++ source code based on the algorithms, which are developed and tested, without the need of further manual changes.
  3. Other peripherals functions than image processing are also packaged.
  4. When PC performance is improved in future, the system also can immediately take advantage from the higher performance without code modification.
As for the above item 3 especially, HALCON can support various functions like socket communication, RS232C, mouse control and so on, because it is dedicated for machine vision development system. The above features enabled us to reduce the development period dramatically. It is needless to say that HALCON provides complete image processing functions as main features of course."
Varir
Image of VARIR

Features of VARIR

VARIR is currently applied to the inspection for solder paste printing, electric parts after re-flow and wire bonding. The total number of installed systems has already exceeded 200. The main features of VARIR are:

  1. Powerful base engine, supplied by Windows NT, Visual C and HALCON.
  2. Movable 12.1 inches touch panel is implemented and it can be operated at both of front and back side of the device.
  3. Automatic retry function and hierarchical multiple algorithms are included.
  4. Compact, lightweight and low-cost.
  5. Easy-to-use data creation and debug environment.

Main functionalities of VARIR

VARIR allows to performs tests as soon as the data is created. Optimized parameters are stored internally as soon as they are determined so that they can be easily re-used again for the same inspected parts later on. In addition, VARIR supports function for re-extending libraries of stored parameters and for converting all of them at once under specific conditions. Selected parameters, which should be changed, can be converted at once by such functions.
When finding defective parts, VARIR outputs the properly processed data so that operators can easily classify and rate the defects. In addition to the above-mentioned functions, the following are supported:
  1. Storing and sorting of previously found defects and rated results.
  2. Training function.
  3. Data editing function in off-line mode.
  4. Localized management of rating for defectiveness.


Information kindly provided by Sony EMCS Corporation Kohda TEC.

All product names, trademarks and images of the products/trademarks are copyright by their holders. All rights reserved. PS2, and "PlayStation" are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.




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Webmaster Last modified: Thu Jul 2 13:30:00 CEST 2009