Omron Corporation

Omron Tateisi Electronics Co.

Hideaki Takahara

Teruhisa Yotsuya

Shigeki Kobayashi

Disclosed is a substrate inspecting method in which light is projected to a part (21) mounted on a substrate (20) from a ring-shaped light source (29), reflected light form the surface of a soldered portion (44) is imaged by an imaging unit (32) and the nature of the soldered portion is inspected by its imaged pattern, characterized by applying fluorescent agents (70) to at least the periphery of the soldered portion of the mounted part on the surface of the substrate, exposing the surface coated with the fluorescent agents to light from the ring-shaped light source to excite the fluorescent agents, exposing the surface of the soldered portion to secondary illuminating light produced by the fluorescent agents to image its reflected light.

Method of and apparatus for inspecting printed circuit boards and the

An apparatus for automatic inspection of printed circuit board assemblies inspects for the correct presence, positioning, and orientation of component parts mounted on a base printed circuit board by processing an image which is obtained from the base printed circuit board mounted with these component parts. In this method for inputting reference printed circuit board assembly data to such an apparatus, a reference base printed circuit board is prepared with reference component parts mounted on it in which the visual distinction between the reference base printed circuit board and these reference component parts is clear, and then an image is obtained from this reference base printed circuit board assembly, and this image is then processed in order to obtain the reference printed circuit board assembly data. Thereby laborious keying in of such reference printed circuit board assembly data is avoided, and the occurrence of errors is minimized. Optionally, the reference base printed circuit board may be arranged to have low visual brightness, while the reference component parts are arranged to have high visual brightness; or the reverse; or the reference base printed circuit board may be arranged to have substantially different color value from that of the reference component parts.The reference base printed circuit board may be made to be fluorescent, optionally by being coated with a fluorescent film, which may itself be further coated with a layer of transparent adhesive agent, which can further serve for retaining the reference component parts.

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Kyoto, Japan

Hideaki Takahara