Contactless Counting

To prevent production line stops and to reduce inventory overhead electronic manufacturers need to know the exact amount of the used SMD component-reels at any time. Currently a slow and inaccurate manual approach is used, while VisiConsult developed a system using X-ray technology that reduces the counting time by over 95%.

Today, mass-market electronics are manufactured almost exclusively on high-performance assembly machines. Time is literally money. Therefore, two aspects are of particular importance: maximum quantities and minimum changeover time. When it comes to the necessity of counting components before or after the assembly progress most manufacturers are still using the old fashioned approach of manual counting devices. VisiConsult, as a specialist for X-ray systems and automation, developed the XRHCount in order to speed up this time consuming process.

Through many years of experience in advanced X-ray inspection tasks the XRHCount has the shortest cycle time (8-10 seconds) and highest accuracy (over 99.9%) of the market. Another cornerstone is the native interface to all major EMS/ERP systems and most barcode scanners/label printers.

  • Supports components on reels, belts and in trays
  • Automatic type estimation that makes bar code scanning obsolete
  • Fast and accurate contactless counting of SMD components using X-ray
  • Robust industrial design for a maximum reliability and lifetime
  • Industry 4.0: Embedded into EMS/ERP systems
  • Plug & Play to all barcode scanners and label printers
  • Global Complementary component cloud and type training service
  • Fastest cycle time below 10 seconds for all reel sizes and quantities
  • Maximum process safety through single part flow

VisiConsult developed the first automated component estimation system that makes a prior type selection obsolete. This decreases the handling time and leads to robust counting results. The consequence is that even new types can be processed by the system if a similar type is already implemented in the type database. Proven through dozens of installations worldwide the system comes with a very comprehensive database covering all common reel types. The algorithm behaves like an artificial intelligence and every new type the system efficiency increases. Combined with constant software updates and development all customers benefit from the growing database.

The system will just detect the similarity and automatically use the best solution. In case of a completely new type a warning is shown and the operator can submit the images to the Counting Cloud. Our accomplished development engineers in Germany will quickly train the new type and ship the result to all systems worldwide. If the same type is used in other plants it will be already pre-trained. Through this functionality the type coverage is growing exponentially, while the local engineering time is highly reduced.