Altman Associates, Inc.

Teledyne Limited

Norman G Altman

J Rodney Worden

A system for inspecting a printed circuit board constituted by an insulating board having a conductive pattern thereon which creates interconnections between circuit elements mounted on the board. In this system, a laser beam is deflected in the X and Y directions to generate a raster scan which is optically split in a manner making it possible to simultaneously examine corresponding sections of the conductive pattern on the board and on the artwork from which the board is derived. The artwork possesses the same scale and the same orientation as the desired conductive pattern on the board and therefore represents the nominal pattern required therefor. In this simultaneous examination, a comparison is made in an associated computer between the dimensions of the conductors in the pattern and the spacings therebetween on the board and on the artwork to determine the extent of the disparities therebetween.

Electro-optical system for inspecting printed circuit boards

In a system for aligning successive configurations of minute semiconductors during manufacture, any selected configuration is carried on a precision X,Y,.theta. table, which is under the automatic control of (1) a standard television camera that is subject to conventional geometrical and shading distortions, (2) pattern-recognition and motor-control circuitry that corrects these distortions so that precision alignment is possible, and (3) a monitor including a television viewing screen for supervising the system.

Television monitoring system for automatically aligning semiconductor

An electro-optical computer-controlled scanning system adapted to accurately and rapidly digitize an engineering or other line drawing and to store the digital data, making it possible to reassemble a stored drawing with virtually the same fidelity as the original document. Use is made of a laser beam scanner having a wide angle deflector to sweep the beam in the X and Y directions to a degree sufficient to traverse the X and Y dimensions of the drawing being digitized and a narrow angle deflector for sweeping the beam in the X and Y directions to a degree sufficient to examine any selected region of the drawing. Information is extracted from the drawing in a two-mode procedure, the first carrying out a low-resolution survey along a narrow stripe extending in the X direction across the drawing to determine whether any drawing information is contained therein. If none is found, the scanner skips one stripe width in the Y direction to carry out a survey of the next stripe, and if information is then found, only the X coordinate thereof is noted and stored in the memory. When a survey of a given stripe results in a finding, the system then switches over to operation in a high-resolution line follower mode in which the X coordinate stored during the survey mode serves to ensure that all information contained in an existing drawing line in the surveyed stripe is indicated in only one output vector. In this mode, the system examines each drawing line to determine its radius of curvature and singularities (nodes, branch points and termini), each line being defined as a vector. During such tracking, the coordinates and number of members of each node and branch points are determined and stored. The survey and line following procedures are repeated until the entire drawing is digitized.

System for automatically digitizing engineering drawings

An electro-optical measuring system wherein a scanning laser or light beam is precisely translated in a direction parallel to itself at a constant rate to define a time-varying sensing field whose energy is picked up by a photoelectric detector that yields an output signal. An object whose dimension is to be measured is inserted in the field whereby the output signal of the detector takes the form of a pulse whose leading edge is developed by the traversal of the beam across one boundary of the object, thereby blocking passage of the energy to the detector, and whose trailing edge is developed by the traversal of the beam across the opposite boundary of the object to restore the energy pick-up. The width or time duration of the pulse is an exact index to the distance between these boundaries, the time duration being converted into a measurement reading. Scanning of the beam is effected by combining two or more optical scanner means whose individual non-linearities are of such magnitude and form that in combination these non-linearities are effectively cancelled out and a final scan is achieved that is extremely linear, whereby measurements of exceptional accuracy are obtained.

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Stamford, CT, United States of America

Norman G Altman