Whats new in 3D AOI?

Great posting. We're looking at AOI for the first time and are trying to understand the pros/cons of 2D, 2D+, and 3D.

M, can you discuss what size parts are too small for the Mirtec MV-3L?

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methos1979,

1. Mirtec, Marantz 2. Koh Young, Orbotech, Mirtec 3. Koh Young Zenith 4. Definitely

Programs for 3D AOI are prepared really faster. Having defined component database, programming takes no more than a couple of hours. Fine tuning takes up to one shift. Having tuned an AOI, there will be few or zero false alarms.

3D AOI does detect pillow soldering defect. Moreover, system is able to calculate real solder volume. 3D system is able to measure body coplanarity. There are a lot of improvements actually.

Regards, Pavel

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Hello M.

We are a low volume high mix manufacturer with a total of 7 Mirtec AOI machines including a new MV-6 OMNI 3D system. I am very pleased with this machine! When we did our 3D AOI research, my team narrowed the field down to 2 vendors, Mirtec and Koh Young. We brought both systems in for evaluation. I figured this is a new technology, so let’s put both vendors to the test.

The Koh Young Zenith system seemed to program very easily up front, but the debug process took much longer than expected. There are a lot of nested menus and tabs which makes this process cumbersome. Our test PCB had a mixture of SMT and TH devices as well as two large SMT connectors which have been an issue for us in the past. There were a couple of defects that the system could not find on our test PCB. This was alarming. The Zenith machine does not handle TH well at all and since the machine doesn’t have side cameras, the KY Technician could not inspect the solder on our test connectors. As a CEM, we require flexibility. The Zenith machine lost points here!

The Mirtec MV-6 OMNI machine also programmed very easily. We found that the MV-6 was more simple to operate especially when reviewing defects. But to be fair, the software is quite similar to that of our previous Mirtec systems and my team is quite proficient. The debug time was also much faster and the machine caught every one of our defects on the first pass, including the solder defect on our SMT connector and a head in pillow 0201 defect of which my team was unaware. The Zenith missed this defect. The MV-6 OMNI was about 35% faster than the Zenith system which is Koh Young’s top end machine. The big difference in speed, and most likely accuracy, is that the MV-6 uses a 15 mega pixel camera vs an 8 mega pixel camera on the Zenith. Lastly, the MV-6 OMNI was significantly less expensive than the Zenith! Needless to say, we selected the Mirtec and plan to purchase another system in Q4, although this time I may opt for the MV-3 OMNI 3D desktop system.

As you can tell, I am a Mirtec fan but for good reason. I believe they offer the “best cost of ownership” of any AOI vendor and their support has been outstanding. That about sums it up!

Hope this helps,

PVasquez

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Hello M,

I have been a Mirtec user for quite few years (not dating myself). I had started with the MV-2 system and sequentially upgraded to the MV-3 and now the MV-6 Omni. We had tremendous luck with the MV-3 from a programming and defect detection standpoint. As the component size decreased, we found the need to upgrade our system. The MV-3 is 2D only and was working well for us. The addition of the shadow moiré 3D capability really cemented the confidence we had in the system. We process 1812 to 01005 chip components routinely and through detect detection, have been able to tune our process and achieve a 99.9% acceptance rating. We had looked at the Koh Young system. It was very impressive and accurate I am sure but the price tag made it not a feasible choice for us. We also looked at the Pemtron AOI. It was just released at the time and did not have an established track record. We were familiar with the Mirtec. the systems have been reliable and the service personnel are world class. It was for that reason that we selected the MV-6. We have been running the system now for about a year and are extremely happy with the purchase. I hope this information is of assistance. Clampron

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