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October 2017 • SMT Magazine 33 er. These, and various applications that are re- quiring, even for the end customer, increased integration. The end device is getting smaller as well, and on top of all that, the Z-dimension is getting even more important—even critical— in some environments. Critical measures for X, Y, theta, and Z in the automotive environment, for instance, are very important. The automated optical metrology has never been so justified. Las Marias: Is having an X-ray capability im- portant nowadays? Pirou: Indeed, it's getting important. It al- ways has been important in the failure analy- sis, but most of the problems are consequenc- es of up-front processes that have not been un- der control. To us, making sure that all individ- ual processes are operating within the limits, that were set to have a good assembly, are es- sential. In that case, you can probably avoid a lot of downstream controls. Seeing the voids at X-ray doesn't help very much. The real key is to avoid voiding. But the X-ray can build redundancy in the quality control chain especially when it is intel- ligently coupled with AOI or SPI technologies. But again, we believe that it's a process-by-pro- cess approach combined to have greater control. We don't believe that there is one single point inspection strategy or electrical test strategy that would replace or be superior to all the others. Las Marias: Definitely, collaboration is impor- tant. Pirou: Collaboration is important. You see the whole industry moving to greater connection. there's this Industry 4.0 global initiative that now leads all equipment manufacturers to link together. Las Marias: Olivier, can you explain some of the latest innovations from Vi TECHNOLOGY that would help customers ensure that their solder paste and solder joints are reliable or perfect? Pirou: Sure. As you know, with our PI Series sys- tem, we're leading the way in fully automated 3D solder paste inspection. I think PI really of- fers superior value in terms of ease of use with unmatched metrology capabilities. Because be- yond the quality of the metrology, of the ma- chine, what we embed in that is really the ease of use. It's an auto-programming machine. We're going also in that direction for 3DAOI. Because most of the players will go to a fully-au- tomated line, nobody really cares to program an SPI machine or an AOI machine or an X-ray ma- chine. If it's auto-programmed, if the limits are well set, if we have a mechanism to stay within process limit boundaries, it would save a lot of time and cost to our customers and, at the end of the day, increase quality. This is what we do with PI. Of course, the same applies to the 3D AOI that we've intro- duced last year. The main innovation that we've brought to NEPCON is Sigma Line, and this is the correlation between 3D SPI and 3D AOI, to make sure that we have a mechanism to auto- adjust tolerances between all inspection sensors in the line. Las Marias: It's like one, smart loop? Pirou: Yes. Closed loop at the process steps, and a smarter loop linking all the quality sensors to- gether in the line, which are 3D SPI, 3D AOI, pre-reflow, and post-reflow. Las Marias: There are still companies who are using 2D AOI and 2D SPI. How do you encour- age them, and what is the justification for them, to move to 3D technology? MOVING TOWARD THE ZERO-DEFECT LINE " If it's auto-programmed, if the limits are well set, if we have a mechanism to stay within process limit boundaries, it would save a lot of time and cost to our customers and, at the end of the day, increase quality. "