Abstract
Optical techniques including the machine vision, laser, and microscope are widely used techniques in electrical industry. The automatic inspection of connetcor is traditionally accomplished by machine vision. However, owing to the rapid advance in the electric technology and packaging technology, the connectors follow the same trend toward fine pitch and high pin counts. When applying machine vision for inspecting this type of connectors, some limitations arise. This research intends to develop an on line laser-based inspection system for electronic connectors, with emphasis on the treatment of the measuring data and the system configuration (i.e. positioning method) to evlevate the system performance. The developed laser-based system utilizies the triangulation measuring technique to caputre the 3D X-Y-Z coordinate data of connector profile . The hardware implement of this system must be capable of capturing reliable measuring data. The developed algorithms then utilize these 3D data to accomplish with better accuracy inspection. The experiment results prove that the developed laser inspection system is capable of inspecting the connectors with quick hardware adjustment and software development. The configuration of hardware and some external factors that may affect the inspection results are also studied in this research. Related suggestions are presented to further elevate the performance of this developed system. Finally, the comparative evaluations between the laser-based technique and the machine vision technique are investigated. This comparison can serve as the reference for the selection between these two techniques.