In China, regardless of the popularity of machine vision or technical capabilities, connector manufacturing is at the forefront of the electronics industry. The huge development space of the connector industry and its growth potential in China have greatly attracted the attention of machine vision practitioners. How to better meet the needs of products, the space for survival and development? Machine vision also has its own unique development trend in the connector industry.
It is an indisputable fact that China has already become the manufacturing center of the world. With open policies, abundant resources, cheap labor, strong spending power, and sustained economic development, China has become a paradise for investors in the world. As the pillar industry of the manufacturing industry, the electronics manufacturing industry is developing more rapidly in China. In just ten years, the scale of the electronics manufacturing industry has ranked third in the world; the entire electronics manufacturing industry has formed a large industrial chain involving electronic materials manufacturing, electronic component manufacturing, and terminal electronics manufacturing, and more sophisticated. Processing, equipment manufacturing, testing equipment and other related industries meet each other, forming a well-known industrial chain in China.
Industry characteristics: different heights
——Manufacturing characteristics, requirements and testing status of different parts of the electronic connector manufacturing industry
Throughout the entire electronics manufacturing industry chain, each industry has distinct characteristics, different processes, and different processes. However, the pursuit of good quality is their common goal. Because of this "zero defect" quality goal has become the current direction of each enterprise, "quality management", "six sigma" and other quality management methods have been widely used, the concept of "quality first" has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Therefore, various detection technologies that can ensure product quality and provide product characteristic data for analysis and further improve process capability are increasingly being widely and thoroughly applied.
In view of the precision and mass production characteristics of electronic connector products, the use of inspection technology is particularly important in its manufacturing process, including mechanical performance testing, environmental testing, electrical performance testing, structural size testing and other aspects.
As far as dimensional inspection is concerned, different requirements are expressed in the manufacturing process of each stage of the connector. The connector manufacturing process is divided into four main processes: stamping, electroplating, injection molding, and assembly. Stamping is the forming zone of a metal terminal. The metal strip is cut by a die through the die to form the shape of the designed metal terminal, resulting in a continuous strip with metal terminals. Plating, that is, the metal terminal after press forming needs to be plated with different plating layers such as tin, lead, and gold on the metal surface. The molding is the process of forming a certain structure of the connector insulation body through the injection mold under the high temperature and high pressure of the injection molding machine. Assembly is the last station in the production of connectors. The stamped and plated metal terminals and the plastic formed by injection molding are assembled in the assembly shop to produce finished products. The metal strip is finished as a finished product through cutting, pinning, breaking, inspection, etc., and then delivered directly to the customer through packaging.
In each of the above four manufacturing steps, the requirements for product size are extremely strict, so only strict measurement is required to ensure that the product meets the quality requirements. At present, the main detection methods can be divided into contact detection and non-contact detection according to different contact methods. For example, metal gauges, micrometers, etc. are contact measurement, while tool microscope, X-ray detector, projection detector, three-dimensional non- Contact measuring instruments are all non-contact measuring. According to the different detection locations, it can be divided into offline detection and online detection.
The above detection instruments have their own applications according to the accuracy, speed and test items. However, they are mainly used for off-line detection because of the slow detection speed, complicated operation and environmental requirements. The main reason for online detection is the use of machine vision inspection equipment. The main reason is that high-speed, high-precision, high-repetition and other production characteristics must be met, so as to meet the higher requirements of on-line inspection of production lines. This is undoubtedly ample soil for the early development and enlightenment of the Chinese machine vision market. Application history: Fang Xingwei Ai Chongyun
——Application history of machine vision in China's electronic connector manufacturing industry
Although it is difficult to trace the exact time for machine vision to enter the connector manufacturing industry in mainland China, it is undoubted that the original application of machine vision in China's connector manufacturing factory originated from the investment of some foreign and Taiwanese manufacturers in mainland China. Factory workshop. In the early 1990s, some connector manufacturers in Europe, America and Taiwan successively invested in setting up factories in the mainland. Some manufacturing and testing equipment with machine vision were gradually introduced into China in the following years, and all of them came from Europe and America. Card system, such as PPT. Because the concept and application of machine vision technology was not mature in China at that time, there were certain bottlenecks in hardware, software and technology. There were a series of problems such as low stability, low speed, high technical threshold and high cost. Therefore, typical specific applications are very few.
In the late 1990s, the manufacture of Chinese electronic products developed rapidly. The emergence and development of mobile phones, PDAs and other products, and the increasing popularity of personal computers, the application fields of connector products are gradually expanding, the output is continuously improved, the products are increasingly compact, and the pins are more and more dense. At this time, some foreign-funded and Taiwan-funded enterprises began to realize the importance of machine vision in production, and they introduced more visual inspection equipment from abroad. At the same time, with the development of related industries such as computers, electronics, semiconductors, etc., machine vision has made breakthrough progress, detection speed continues to increase, software algorithms continue to mature, and prices are no longer prohibitive.
At the time, the machine vision system still mainly came from foreign countries and Taiwan, and the mainland could hardly find a machine vision system integrator. However, the development of machine vision in China has never stopped. Over time, the concept of "machine vision" has gradually entered the eyes of the electronics manufacturing industry. More and more people are beginning to have a strong interest in it, and huge business opportunities are attracting people's attention. Companies such as DVT, OMRON, COGNEX, and NAIS have introduced smart cameras, which have greatly reduced the system.