Breakthrough Bundle X-out Fiducial Design for Multi-up PCB

There are few methods to manage the panel with X-out board for board manufacturing. One of the methods is to black marked the fiducial of the individual X-out board so that when the P&P(pick-and-place) equipment’s camera capture the black marked fiducial image, it will skip the X-out board for component placement. Same concept work for AOI machine to skip the X-out board for inspection. However, fiducial image capturing for individual board is a time consuming process and it will reduce the output of the board manufacturing significantly. A new approach called ‘Bundle X-out Fiducial’(BXF) has been designed to increase the beat rate of the board manufacturing if compared to the conventional method of individual board fiducial scanning. The idea of the bundle X-out fiducial is to design a group of special fiducials which are close to each other at outrigger of the panel which representing each single board location on the panel. The BXF will reduce the travel time of the P&P equipment’s camera to capture and recognize the X-out fiducial, hence, reduce the P&P cycle time by ~50%. This paper will review the design pattern of the BXF.