PartnerTech bolsters UK fast-turn product introduction build capability with Metris X-Tek X-ray system

17/10/2008

PartnerTech, one of Europe's leading contract manufacturing companies, selected an X-Tek X-ray inspection system to test high-complexity boards featuring Ball Grid Arrays (BGAs) and Chip Size Packages (CSPs).

The company installed the inspection system at its 2,700 square metre UK manufacturing facility at Poole in Dorset. The new kit will further improve PartnerTech’s capability of providing customers with fast-turn builds of highly complex electronic and mechatronic products featuring devices such as BGAs and CSPs. Last year, Metris acquired X-Tek, the British manufacturer of X-ray and computed tomography (CT) inspection systems.

The X-Tek inspection system is said to provide the highest resolution and magnification possible within a compact X-ray system for quality control, research and failure analysis.

The machine has the ability to inspect substrates at steep angles of up to 75 degrees and is designed for 100% BGA and µBGA, multi-layer board and PCB solder joint inspection, with quick analysis of BGA ball wetting, attachments, cracks and delaminations.

"We do a lot of rapid new product introductions (NPI) for customers at the Poole facility, and many of the products feature unusual devices and geometries that cannot be visually inspected," says
Rex Waygood, Technical Manager at PartnerTech's Poole facility. "We therefore needed a system that is able to perform automatic X-ray inspection (AXI) using angled views and test fine-pitch devices as well as BGAs and CSPs. Most importantly, we needed a system that gives us complete confidence that boards, particularly products that we have not built before, are assembled correctly first time."

PartnerTech in Poole offers its customers the full range of product lifecycle services, including product design/development, prototyping, NPI, test solutions, PCB assembly (PCBA), full-system build, logistics, distribution and after sales. The company works in partnership with OEMs across medical, aerospace and defence, industrial and telecom markets.

"Having our own X-ray system at Poole is very important as some of the high-complexity products are built so quickly – well ahead of any in-circuit, functional or boundary scan test sequences being written – that X-ray is often the only way to validate a PCB without compromising the fast response service offered to our customers," adds Waygood.

"We selected the X-Tek system because it met our specification and performed well in tests against other comparative systems. In addition, as we have already been using an X-Tek system at our Cambridge facility for some time now, we knew that the kit would be easy to use, reliable, economic to run and that the support would be good."

www.xtekxray.com

<< Back