If the market is big enough, sooner or later Google will join it.

That much was laid bare in late June when the search giant cum OEM announced its latest venture, Visual Inspection AI, a new “purpose-built solution” designed to help businesses, including manufacturers, reduce defects and cut operational costs.

Now before you start doubting Google’s temerity to dive into technology that cuts across almost every industry imaginable, remember we’ve been here before.

While the company today still counts on its hugely successful targeted search marketing program for the bulk of its revenue and profits, several other businesses it has launched have made serious inroads in their respective markets. These include broadband; telecommunications; autonomous vehicles; and human health gambits (marketed under the Verily Life Sciences name). Acquisitions brought it Nest Labs, the maker of smart thermostats. Less front and center, but just as integral, are Google’s vast data centers, also known as server farms, which power its reach into just about every precipice known to man.

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Getting all the parts and processes aimed in the same direction.

Printed circuit board technology never sleeps. At this very moment, engineering teams are working out ways to increase circuit density with finer-pitch devices. When it comes to placing these components on a PCB, the margin of error shrinks along with the pin pitch. Let’s look at how we can enable these parts on the assembly line.

The first step in mass production of a PCB assembly is preparing the board to take components. The boards may be baked in an oven prior to starting the assembly process. Although they are packed in sealed containers with a little bag of desiccant, the sponge-like dielectric materials still absorb water one molecule at a time. Prebaking releases the steam that could interfere with reflow soldering.

Ideally, all parts on a board will use the same type of technology and will be roughly the same class of components in terms of pin-pitch and other physical aspects (FIGURE 1). Tall and heavy components plus small and light ones are not a good mix. Tall ones create so-called shadows where the surrounding area doesn’t get as hot during soldering.

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Soldering excursions can lead to visual process indicators.

This month we look at cracks in plated through-holes around the knee of the hole. FIGURE 1 shows very small via holes that were subjected to multiple lead-free soldering steps, then underwent thermal cycling with no failures but a little cracking.

The cracks visible in the microsection were found on via holes not after the initial two reflow steps and wave-soldering test boards, but after further temperature cycling at -55^o +125^oC. No electrical failures were detected, just the impact of repeated stressing of the copper. It is a good demonstration of how reliable a board can be, but all that stress does have some visual impact. Care must be taken during microsection preparation to see these indicators.

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At least five operation areas can benefit from switching from manual data entry.

"Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity, not a threat." – Steve Jobs

Several years ago, I embarked on an advanced engineering initiative, seeking unknown, innovative ways of processing PCB design packages for manufacturing external to the status quo, with a primary objective to drive efficiency and productivity, eliminating redundant data entry and reducing human interactions with their associated software applications. I had thrown in the towel relying on our software vendors to provide real and robust solutions. In my opinion, it was not in their interest. As their focus was selling more licenses to increase revenue, developing and marketing advanced automated solutions did not support this cause. My mantra was to take internal ownership and venture into unfamiliar territories. This path led me to OCR (optical character recognition) and, although skeptical at first, the results of our analysis were phenomenal.

Product design specifications and requirements are provided in formats such as PDF, Word, Excel, HPGL, or even as handwritten notes on scrap paper. A close associate of mine calls it “e-paper.” The variety of methodologies used to convey the same information across the PCB industry that is often ambiguous is staggering, to say the least. We print, read, interpret (hopefully correctly) and manually enter these data into our respective software application, often multiple times by multiple organizations.

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