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AOI price

#33162

AOI price | 11 March, 2005

Hello all,

Would you please tell me what is the approximate price for AOI machine? At least for the most popular AOI's. Do you think each production needs AOI? Is it really decreasing the failures a lot? Thank you in advance.

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#33172

AOI price | 11 March, 2005

About $60K for a good bench-top unit and $120K for a good in-line.

AOI is justified if you are spending a lot of time ($$) visually inspecting your boards. AOI machine is faster and more reliable than a human for this task. Plus, visual inspectors do not add quality to a product and they are not generating any revenue for the company. If inpection is required (due to defects) and more than one person is dedicated for that operation, then AOI is a no-brainer. Then, you use only one person to inspect and give the others something productive to do.

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#33185

AOI price | 11 March, 2005

AOI does nothing to decrease the failures. It only helps to spot them. Fix your problems and you won't need an AOI.

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Marcus

#33188

AOI price | 12 March, 2005

Fixing your problems needs to be based on hard data. But hard data is difficult to get from humans. They intend to see (and repair) what they e.g. understood best or what is easy to justify. This effect can be eliminated with an AOI. If programmed right, it'll get you over the SPC some good advise what to do. Most bench top systems have their difficulties with solder joint inspection. But the solder joins give you info about your printing process. I consider this as a nessecary base function.

Best

Marcus

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#33189

AOI price | 12 March, 2005

Thanks for your answers. What I am thinking is after reflow AOI doesn't make sense. May be it is helpful only before that - show you the problems , may be repair station or something like that. What do you think about that?

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#33191

AOI price | 12 March, 2005

Marcus-

I guess I'm too old school. When I was involved in manufacturing there wasn't any AOI and we got along fine for years without it, (like everyone else). But I can certainly see the benefits of it if you have highly complex boards that are just too difficult to manualy inspect but too many people assume an AOI machine will solve all of their inferior process models....and that's where I begin to disagree.

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VS

#33192

AOI price | 13 March, 2005

After reflow AOI makes sense because it has the highest coverage of the defects. Problems like tombstone, lifted pins, open solder joints, some shorts and insufficient solder you will not find before oven. I would also not agree with the statement that AOI can do nothing in order to prevent the defects happened. AOI can warn you in time to prevent problem happened in the large amount of boards - for example give you warning in case of found repeated defects, so you can fix the problem before it affects large ammount of boards. Wrong component for example. It can also pinpoint on specific fider or P&P head problem, if connection to P&P line is available. Using SPC you can easily see your main problems and improve the process accordingly. You can assess the capability of your line for certain process and so on. Vadim Shishov. Orbotech Pacific

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