Soldering apparatus and method
AssigneeHakko Corporation
InventorYoshitomo Teraoka
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A soldering apparatus and method involves capturing an image of a soldering operation, and storing image data in association with that particular soldering operation. A soldering tool that is used to perform the soldering operation has a position during the soldering operation, and the image data could also be stored in association with data for that particular position. The position data could be for an operation start point and/or an operation endpoint. Associating the image data in this way could help a manufacturer investigate soldering abnormalities that might be reported after a product is shipped to a customer.
Claims27
A soldering apparatus comprising:
- a soldering tool for performing a soldering operation, the soldering tool comprising a tip, wherein the soldering tool is movable relative to a substrate during the soldering operation;
- a camera oriented toward the tip, the camera configured to generate image data of the soldering operation;
- and
- a controller including a memory, the controller in communication with the camera, the controller configured to receive image data from the camera and to store the image data in the memory, the image data being stored in association with position data of the tip during the soldering operation, wherein the controller is configured to use an indicator previously stored in the memory to determine whether image data from the camera is to be stored in the memory.
A soldering method comprising:
- performing a soldering operation that comprises using a soldering tool to deposit solder on one or both of a substrate and a component portion on the substrate, wherein performing the soldering operation comprises moving the soldering tool according to position data in the memory;
- capturing an image of the solder that was deposited;
- storing image data corresponding to the image that was captured, the image data being stored in a memory, the image data being stored in association with the position data of the tip during the soldering operation
- using a computer to analyze the image data and generate an analysis result indicating whether a soldering abnormality is present in the image data;
- and
- storing the analysis result in the memory in association with the position data.
A soldering apparatus comprising:
- a soldering tool for performing a soldering operation, the soldering tool comprising a tip, wherein the soldering tool is movable relative to a substrate during the soldering operation;
- a camera oriented toward the tip, the camera configured to generate image data of the soldering operation;
- a controller including a memory, the controller in communication with the camera, the controller configured to receive image data from the camera and to store the image data in the memory, the image data being stored in association with position data of the tip during the soldering operation;
- and
- a computer in communication with the controller, wherein the controller is configured to send image data, which was received from the camera, to the computer, and the computer is configured to detect a soldering abnormality in the image data sent by the controller and configured to send an analysis result to the controller, the analysis result indicating whether a soldering abnormality was detected by the computer in the image data sent by the controller.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.