Memories of a less-automated environment, where quality was occasionally "inspected in" a product, are difficult to banish. Along with quality improvements that resulted from higher levels of automation in process manufacturing, emerging automated inspection technologies, now with decades of development behind them, are striving to eliminate the potential for human error. The ideal manufacturing setting would have an SMT (or through-hole) line dedicated to a single product, and first-article inspection (FAI) would be performed on the first-off assembly. Then the line would run for the next 12 months building nothing but exact copies of that same rev level of that very first article. Under such a scenario, we might even have a flawless parts verification system that couldn't be circumvented by reel replacements or splicing. Add closed-loop SPI to this equation to ensure no paste printing problems materialize, and perhaps an AOI machine that produces no false calls or escapes. To round out that awesome configuration, let's add AXI at the backend to reveal those nasty hidden joints!
展开▼
