Real-time optical inspection of plated relay contacts

An inspection system has been developed to improve both the reliability and the yield of surface treated components. Digitized data streams from photo detectors are fed into a hybrid DSP/multi-processor transputer system. The photo detectors collect scattered light from twin laser scanners (one scanner for each side of the relay contact). For real time operation the system inspects up to 10 contacts per second, finding defects as small as 5 (mu) in raw combined data streams totaling approximately 20 Mbyte/sec. The inspection system is currently inspecting the surfaces of plated relay contacts on the factory floor. This paper describes the inspection system with emphasis on the constraints imposed by the requirement for real time processing of large volumes of data.© (1993) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.