Global SMT and Packaging Interview with Dr. Subodh Kulkarni at Productronica 2019

Trevor Galbraith from Global SMT and Packaging discusses with Dr. Subodh Kulkarni, President and CEO, CyberOptics, about the CyberCMM functionality at Productronica in Munich, Germany

TG: Welcome to CyberOptics, here at Productronica. Delighted to be joined by Dr. Subodh Kulkarni.

SK: Good to see you again.

TG: One of the things you brought out in the last year or so is the CMM functionality. Which is really a direct measurement system. A lot of the other AOI companies have been using imagery basically, but in an age of Industry 4.0 and Smart Factory you really need data, hard data. Tell us a bit about why you went into the CMM and what it brings.

SK: We are excited to bring the CMM functionality into our AOI system, and really it’s the world’s first in-line CMM too that you’re seeing at the show floor. What really got us here is our customers. For our customers, what is going on at a higher level is the semiconductor industry and SMT industries are merging together. And a lot of applications that are very demanding are coming from that merged space. The advanced packaging space, is where we are really finding our sweet spot. As customers are stacking chips or embedding dies, or doing fan-in/ fan-out kinds of packages, and merging them with SMT/ PCB type packages, they need not only inspection but also measurement.

They need to know not only the image is good or if it’s pass or fail, but they need to know whether all the dimensions are accurate, the point-to-point distances are accurate. In cases like socket metrology, are the pins at the right height, are the coplanarities exactly what they want it to be? So it’s no longer acceptable for them to just say pass or fail. They need to know the real measurements, and that’s what we’ve enabled.

At the heart of it is our sensing technology. We believe we are the best with our 3D non-contact optical sensing technology that we call MRS, Multi-Reflection Suppression. That allows us extremely high accuracy, resolution and speed all at the same time. With the high fidelity data that we have, we can enable measurements on top of that. So once you have the raw data, which is extremely high-quality, then generating measurements is not a difficult task. It’s a fairly simple software routine that can generate all the measurements. But what got us here is customers in the advanced packaging space where SMT and semi are merging.

TG:  As you said, you have been known for many years for your sensing technology and producing your sensors. You also talked about raw data. Raw data gives you the cleanest, most measurable data you can get. What sort of accuracy are you getting down to?

SK: Our highest resolution sensor, that we call our Ultra-High Resolution MRS Sensor [PSX 325], goes into our 3D AOI CMM system, which we call SQ3000™. The sensor has a lateral resolution of 7µm, so It gives you a few micron, 3 sigma accuracy in the XY dimension. But because we are using phase shift profilometry, our Z dimension accuracy is down to a tenth of a micron. So we are really accurate in the Z dimension even more than the XY dimension. And many customers want to know the Z dimension has more accuracy than the XY dimension, and that really is where phase shift profilometry plays pretty well. So we’re talking typically a couple micron 3 sigma in XY direction, and a tenth of a micron 3 sigma in the Z direction. So very accurate.

TG:  What kind of heights can you go up to on the Z direction?

SK: On a raw basis, we can go up to 30mm Z component height. The depth of focus becomes important, so we have a few millimeter depth of focus. At any given moment of time if you are using our highest resolution sensor, you need to choose the plane where you are looking at. Overall, we can go up to 30mm height for components. 

TG:  So you cover all these connectors and pins that are used in automotive, and this type of thing.

SK: Absolutely. And again, the resolution and accuracy are around a tenth of a micron, so very accurate over a very long distance.

TG:  You sell this CMM functionality as a license. So I assume therefore this can be backwards compatible with machines that are in the field.

SK: Absolutely. We’ve enabled the in-line CMM functionality about a year ago, so many of our customers that have bought our SQ3000 AOI/SPI system come back to us and want to enable the CMM functionality. The CMM functionality requires an additional flash drive that is connected to the system, and the software can do all the measurements at the same time. All of the machines that we’ve sold a couple years ago are backward compatible, they can buy our CMM functionality, and going forward we’ll continue to do that. We always try to maintain backward compatibility.

TG:  I think you’ve done exceptionally well bringing in the CMM functionality. And I want to thank you for telling us more about it today.

SK: Thank you for your interest, we look forward to showing more improvements in the future.