Experimental System For The Inspection Of Printed Wiring Boards

An experimental system for the automatic visual inspection of printed wiring boards is described. The inspection is based on the comparison of the board patterns and the computer aided design (CAD) data. The system is capable of classifying the defects and of rejecting the false alarms making the need for operator intervention very low. A part of the implementation is based on special hardware and the rest of the processing is done by a minicomputer. The system is equipped with several lighting configurations for inspecting boards at different stages of the fabrication process.