The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 29, 1990
Filed:
Feb. 27, 1989
Israel Amir, Ewing, NJ (US);
Frank P Higgins, Ewing, NJ (US);
AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ (US);
Abstract
Inspection of a circuit board (10) to detect missing and misaligned active and passive surface-mounted components (12) and (14), respectively, is accomplished by first illuminating the board with top light to enhance the image of the passive components. The circuit board is then displaced, relative to a linescan camera (28) trained on the board, so that the camera captures the image of successive strips of surface area running across the board perpendicular to its direction of movement. The images captured by the camera (28) are stored and thereafter processed by an image-processing system (33) to determine whether any passive component is missing or misaligned. The circuit board is then illuminated with side light to enhance the image of the active components. The circuit board is again displaced relative to the linescan camera so the camera captures the image of successive strips of surface area on the board. The captured images are stored and then processed by the image-processing system to detect whether any of the active surface-mounted components are missing or misaligned.