For electronics products sold today, necessary markings such as symbols, text, and numbers are applied to components during the manufacturing and assembly process. Components can be made of metal, plastic, glass, ceramic or other materials and markings are applied using laser etching, printing, or similar methods. Product makers must ensure that any markings are free of defects, meet quality and brand standards, and comply with trade regulations. What manufacturers need is a fast, accurate inspection solution to identify quality and color issues so they can be quickly addressed and corrected before products go to market. 

Typical machine-vision inspection systems can assess text completeness and accuracy, but they cannot measure accurate color or fine-grain detail. Spectrometers provide highly accurate color measurement, but only for one spot at a time and they cannot recognize or assess characters or symbols. These limitations mean manufacturers may have to use two or more different inspection systems, increasing cost and production time. 

With ACIS, users can now perform fast, automated measurement of text and symbol shape (inclusions and exclusions), dimensions, color, and contrast. ACIS helps manufacturers to ensure characters are legible and correctly formed, verify compliance with requirements for CE and other regulatory markings, ensure brand color and quality standards, and perform product text validation, while supporting part traceability (e.g., confirming serial numbers). Beyond quality control, the data ACIS captures as it detects small variations in markings can also be analyzed to identify trends and support process control.

ACIS combines the best of machine vision (text inspection and area measurement) and spectrometers (accurate color measurement) in a single tool. Leveraging the visual acuity and context of imaging colorimetry, ACIS provides an integrated solution that helps manufacturers improve quality while increasing efficiency. ACIS performs accurate quality inspection and measurement of text, symbols, and markings—simultaneously using a single camera image.

ACIS Key Capabilities

With ACIS, manufacturers can:

  • Measure multiple locations simultaneously across an area to inspect color consistency between points with near-spectrometer accuracy
  • Inspect small elements thanks to high-resolution, high sensitivity measurement capabilities with pixel resolution ≥ 10 μm
  • Take precise, CIE-traceable chromaticity measurements (e.g., XYZ, L*a*b*) of small areas that are difficult to measure with conventional systems
  • Verify marks for regulatory compliance (CE, FCC ID, RoHS, IEC, etc.)