Many electronic device manufacturers require their suppliers to inspect 100 percent of all supplied parts, to ensure that shipments contain only defect-free parts. Steve Koopman, manufacturing engineer, says, "Inspection accuracy is a critical aspect of our business. Faulty components result in device failure and damage the device manufacturer's reputation. Our customers rely on us to provide reliable connectors." Some of the essential inspections for electronic connectors include pin presence and absence, coplanarity and true position. These features are critical to successful seating of the connector on the PCB and mating of the connector to a cable.
Previously, part inspections were performed manually. However, manual inspections had to end when the company began producing tiny, high-density connectors. Some of these high-density connectors can have up to 500 pins in multiple row configurations. With such a large quantity of small pins, the human eye is incapable of discerning coplanarity. Therefore, despite a high degree of expertise within the inspection group, visual inspection of the new high-density connectors achieved an unacceptable accuracy level.