Printed Circuit Board Assembly & PCB Design SMT Electronics Assembly Manufacturing Forum

Printed Circuit Board Assembly & PCB Design Forum

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Inspection Equipment

Steve Vargas

#17674

Inspection Equipment | 21 September, 2001

We are considering buying a 1996 vintage CR Technology RTI-6500 inspection system. Its primary use will be to inspect for SMT part presence / absence. Has anyone used or had any experience with this piece of equipment? Thanks.

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Rich

#17701

Inspection Equipment | 25 September, 2001

I have had good experience with the 6500. We used it to inspect both SMD and TH devices. (presence, polarity, correct part)

I would suggest you contact CR (now Phton Dynamics) for the latest software. It has some serious improvments over early releases.

If the on-board PC is not "up to date" consider replacing it with a faster machine. You will be processing lots of data and the PC has to be able to keep up.

Development of the part library was probably the worst aspect of the learning curve. Once defined, the machine worked well. (Use the password protection capabilities to preserve the library)

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vance

#17715

Inspection Equipment | 26 September, 2001

we have 2 RTI-6500. What is your mix/volume?

-vance

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Steve

#17723

Inspection Equipment | 27 September, 2001

We are a high mix, low volume shop. Average lot size would be 50 - 150 boards. My concern is how the machine will handle the high mix environment.......

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vance

#17727

Inspection Equipment | 27 September, 2001

Programming time is going to be your biggest concern with a high mix environment. This includes maintaining programs. Any time a part's appearance changes (color, location of marking, wording, etc) templates need to be modified in some way to produce a PASS. Be prepared to plant yourself or someone else on the machine for a while.

------------- Other Schtuff:

With regard to part recognition, the machine performs fairly well, however, gold components usually produce a false fail.

I suggest gettting the latest software. We have an older version that likes to crash.

We also have problems with low light level. We have purchased some more lights to help compensate (don't know if this will create problems on "shiny" components.

I suggest having a computer with at least 256 MB RAM and a 733 Mhz processor. The computer that came with our machine was unable to perform at an acceptable level.

I also suggest sending an engineer to AOV school in San Diego, CA. They have some tricks to reduce programming time.

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