Optical Inspection System for FASTECH(R) Backplanes

AT&T Microelectronics, Richmond Works, required an inspection system for verifying FASTECH(R) connector pin locations prior to electrical test. The inspection criteria for the pins on the top side of the board includes detection of straightness, detection of height, and detection of missing pins. On the bottom side of the board the criteria include detection of straightness, detection of gold, and detection of missing pins. In addition, some types of pins are stubbed to the backplane surface on either side. There are approximately 20 different types of pins for this type of backplane. Each pin can be uniquely identified by a height measurement on the top of the board and gold/no gold detection on the bottom of the backplane. All pins in each backplane are on .125" centers. The inspection system takes about two minutes to fully inspect a backplane with 5000 pins. The system is also capable of downloading the ASCII files necessary to run the system from the factory's mainframe computer.