Multiline Newsline

Volume 2 Number 4 / Editor: Steve Scheinpflug / December 1998

New Product
(Post Lamination Drilling)

Tech Talk

Annual Toy Drive
Shots From The Shop

Upcoming Show

Happy Anniversary
A Winning Season

Website Tour

Expressing Your Interest

New Product Release

ultiline Technology is pleased to announce the addition of the latest member to our registration tooling systems family. The New XRT-1000 which is an X-ray tooling and Inspection system designed for Post Lamination Drilling of Multilayers.

Layer to layer registration variation from panel to panel can occur during lamination of multilayer panels. Post processing these panels in preparation for drilling demands the use of X-Ray to locate internal copper images and then drill of new tooling holes for pinning to the Drill.

The XRT 1000 X-rays every panel and drills new tooling holes based on the panels individual registration characteristics. Any registration errors caused by material instability, or shifts during the lamination cycle are compensated by optimizing the location of the drilled tooling holes to the stack up of internal targets on every individual layer. The result of this process is better registration drilled of drilled holes to internal pads registration through the panel, no program drill offsets, faster set-up on the Drill, and increased thru puts in the Drill Room, Drill down time for offset determination is virtually eliminated.

The XRT is loaded manually by the operator, thru puts of over 200 panels per hour can be expected but may vary depending on the operators efficiency. The operation of the XRT is user friendly with easy to read screens. The software prompts the operator on the monitor with all the necessary instructions for operating the system.

The Main Features include:

Three-hole centerline drill tooling pattern; two centerline holes, plus an additional orientation hole.

Reference targets are tooled into the base of the system and no template or reference panel is required for set up. Glass scale linear encoders are used to locate drill head and camera positions.

Infinite adjustability for 12" x12" to 24" to 30" panel sizes. Distance between the drilled holes is determined by input from the operator during set up.

Change over for different panel sizes requires only a few keyboard entries. The cameras and drills move automatically into position. The total time for change over is usually less than two minutes.

SPC data is provided on each panel processed indicating the spread value between the panel targets and the system reference positions. This data is presented to the operator on the system monitor graphically as a plot of "spread" compared to upper and lower tolerance limits input during the job set up. This data can be stored by part number and retrieved later for analysis.

Eliminating parallax is the basis behind the integrated design of the XRT-1000, which incorporates the x-ray camera and the x-ray source on the same structural casting. Perfect alignment of the camera and source is maintained for any panel size without the need for realignment or special error correcting software.

Fixed tooling assures accuracy and repeatability, which can not be achieved with moveable axis machines. Aligning both targets, splitting the error and drilling all tooling holes simultaneously eliminates all that variables associated with a moving table. The thru-put of the XRT-1000 is enhanced due to the fixed tooling design.

Accuracy of +/- 0.001" centerline of target stacks to centerline of drilled holes

Accuracy of +/- 0.001" drilled tooling hole to drilled tooling hole

Repeatability of +/- 0.0005"

Panel Thickness Ranges from .014" to .190"

Lap Software (Layer Analysis Package)

Although the XRT functions by looking at a stack up of targets with X-Ray, and determines a best fit before drilling, it also has the ability to analyze movement on a layer by layer basis.

Unlike other measuring techniques currently available for layer analysis of laminated panels, X-Ray is non-destructive and can be performed during the normal progression of the panel through the process steps. In some of the other methods of internal layer analysis the panel must be drilled before it can be checked. This not only requires another step but also adds the drill tolerance to the measuring accuracy.

The XRT with the LAP (Layer Analysis Package) has the capability to calculate spreads (material growth or shrinkage) for both X and Y axis for each individual layer in a laminated multilayer printed circuit board. In addition to common targets used for drilling, a set of targets specific to each layer is imaged and etched on the innerlayers. To use LAP, the operator places the panel in the machine and selects the TEST MODE. The panel is aligned and nulled to the common target stack. The operator can select which layers to have the machine measure. Up to nine targets can be selected. If targets are placed on the X and Y-axis then the panel can be rotated and placed back in the machine. The X-Ray cameras automatically move to the "Y" dimension and the machine automatically goes thru the same routine as was performed in the "X" axis