BEST provides a variety of inspection services, whether for referee dispute reconciliation or in cases where the manufacturer does not have the capability to perform a given inspection. This may be via optical or x-ray inspection.
PCB inspection can take on a variety of optical forms (See
IPC A 610 courses for more information). One of the first forms is via Automated Optical Inspection which is accomplished by a high-speed automated piece of machinery. In this case all components can be inspected for anomalies such as missing or reversed components, part number anomalies and other items. Manual optical inspection is sufficient in cases where a small area needs to be inspected. Again these forms of inspection can be either for referee or for sorting or original assembly purposes.
X-ray inspection services are offered by BEST to sort, inspect initial assembly quality or resolve disputes between electronics assembler and OEM. Assemblies can be loaded into a tooling fixture for multiple up higher throughput performance or once a “golden board” or near perfect board is used as the reference standard then the machine can take over and spit out an inspection report on each like assembly. Though-hole fill, void percentages on leadless devices and POP inspection are just some of the device soldering characterisitics where assemblers have come to rely on x-ray inspection.