Modern data exchange with the Viscom Open Interface 4.0

With the Viscom Quality Uplink and Viscom Statistical Process Control (SPC), users of inspection systems like the S3088 SPI, S3088 ultra gold or X7056RS have tools at hand that provide versatile data linkages and evaluation options. Now, with the new Viscom Open Interface 4.0 feature, a decisive step further has been taken: Information can now be merged independently of the manufacturer.

At first, Viscom Open Interface 4.0 is available for the software platform SI and consists of two components: The first is an open interface to SPI systems from any manufacturer. The second provides users large amounts of information from inspection processes for a wide variety of evaluations.

Above all, the open SPI interface makes it possible to merge results from Viscom automatic optical inspection (AOI) and X-ray inspection (AXI/MXI) with the SPI data of another system manufacturer, and to do it so well that the user hardly notices the difference in origin. Users can call up SPI image data on the verification station and link them there with SPI inspection results and measurement values as well as different Viscom inspection data.

If the SPI system classifies solder deposits as defective, it also can call for additional images from the Viscom systems interlinked with it. For these functions, Viscom provides, in standardised form, a dynamic program library and function calls that enable other suppliers of SPI systems to connect their software to the Viscom interface.

The second component of the Viscom Open Interface 4.0 is very powerful interfaces for big data. Production processes today provide a wide array of information that can be used in companies for process-related evaluations. For exactly this purpose, Viscom inspection systems can provide information amounts per printed circuit board in the megabyte range. These include inspection results and component names, among others. If other systems use the customers’ database in a similar way, cross-references that would otherwise remain hidden can be made based on the component name, for example.

The ability to interlink 3D SPI, 3D AOI, 3D AXI and 3D MXI from a single source continues to offer clear advantages, since the related software platform, as a rule, is optimally designed for communicating between systems from the same manufacturer. But the data of the Viscom inspection systems also can flow into databases with different IT systems for control of production, and the inspection results can be linked with those from SPI systems of other manufacturers. The new Viscom Open Interface 4.0 is proof that Industry 4.0 has long since arrived in practice.