COGNEX SYSTEM HELPS FLEXTRONICS INCREASE YIELD TO 95%.
In the past, a top-selling insulin pump was inspected by 20 to 25 quality control inspectors using microscopes. Yield was about 85%, primarily because the subjective inspection criteria used in the past meant that each inspection was a judgment call. The manufacturer asked Flextronics International Ltd. Department of Manufacturing Technology if six areas of the part could be inspected with machine vision in a cycle time of 5 seconds. Flextronics considered using conventional "dumb" cameras and frame grabbers and writing custom software running on a PC but determined it would take 18 months to develop the application using this approach.
Instead the company used six Cognex® In-Sight® vision systems that Flextronics engineers programmed using a graphical interface to select pre-built algorithms that run on the vision systems themselves. "We were able to program six extremely complicated inspection operations in only six weeks by making use of Cognex pre-built algorithms," said Pablo Espinosa, Senior Design Engineer for Flextronics based in Aguascalientes, Mexico. The complete time to get the vision systems up and running was six months. The vision systems are mounted on a six-station rotary index machine that completely inspects one product every 4.3 seconds and has a capacity of over 13,000 products per day in three shifts. The vision systems inspect to an objective standard, increasing yield to 95% for the extremely complicated and close tolerance product.