Visualising automatic product inspection of PCB units

This paper discusses how the inspection of a printed circuit board (PCB) was conducted automatically by using a machine. PCB comprises of sensitive electronic components and could be easily destructed upon inspection for quality control purposes. Therefore a machine is used instead of depending on human in conducting the inspection to minimise human error and inspection time, maintain quality level and minimise component damage during the handling. The project aims to visually describe automatic inspection process starting from the component handling on a conveyor, image capturing and comparison, and the display of the inspection result and PCB information on a monitor screen. The machine model was developed in three dimensions by using AutoCAD 2005, the animation was programmed by using 3D Studio Max and VRML to enable the real function of the machine to be displayed. The visualisation was executed on a VRML Pad platform and implemented on a web environment.