A High-speed Inspection System of Large Area Component

Abstract

AOI (Automatic optical inspection) systems are becoming more and more important in industrial production lines. Because of the progress of manufacturing technology, the area of TFT-LCD panel components is growing larger, and the requested resolution is getting tinier. Here we are interested in the defect inspection of large area component, such as color filter, TFT array pattern, and substrate glass. The difficulties in its defect inspection are its complex texture and demand for high-speed processing. In this paper, we proposed a high-speed AOI system, including the multi-thread structure and the inspection algorithm. The multi-thread structure can decrease the loading of CPU at host PC. It makes the AOI system becomes simple, flexible, and easier to be managed. The proposed inspection algorithm improves the traditional cell-to-cell comparison method and improves inspection rate. Experimental results show that the proposed AOI system can efficiently detect the defects with high-speed, and it is useful and practical in real inspection line of large area component.