Guangzhou Zengcheng Harley Automation Company, which has been deeply involved in the field of non-standard automation for more than ten years, announced that its self-developed optical communication filter automatic detection equipment has been officially mass-produced and delivered. As a high-tech enterprise established in 2014 in the core area of the manufacturing industry in the Pearl River Delta, Harley Automation has always focused on the automation upgrade needs in the fields of 3C electronics, semiconductors and precision optics.
As the core component of optical fiber communication systems, optical communication filters are often composed of dozens of layers of dielectric films, and their transmittance, cut-off wavelength and other parameters and accuracy directly affect the transmission quality of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) systems. Previously, the industry generally relied on manual high-magnification eyepiece inspection, which not only faced the efficiency bottleneck of "500pcs/h", but also led to a high rate of missed detection and false detection due to problems such as manual placement angle deviation and differences in personnel experience, especially for the detection of 1.4-2.5 mm micro filter units. With the acceleration of 5G base station expansion and data center construction, the demand for filters has surged, and manual inspection has become difficult to match the needs of large-scale production.
Relying on more than ten years of non-standard automation technology accumulation, Harley Automation has set up an interdisciplinary R&D team and completed the technical research in 12 months. Since its establishment, the company has taken "pragmatic innovation, efficient and win-win" as its core culture, and has served more than 80 manufacturing enterprises through the "standardized module customized adaptation" model. In this research and development, the team innovatively integrated a dual visual positioning system and a tunable light source detection module: the industrial camera accurately identifies the position and angle of the filter in the feeding process, and guides the vacuum suction cup to grasp with an accuracy of 0.01 mm; In the inspection stage, the 350-2500nm full-band scanning is achieved through a fully automatic wavelength selector, combined with the data collected by a high-resolution spectrometer, which can accurately identify 10-micron defects such as scratches and bubbles. When unloading, it is automatically classified into different material boxes according to the test results, and there is no need for manual intervention throughout the process.
According to the measurement of third-party authoritative institutions, the detection accuracy of this equipment is 40% higher than that of manual labor, the detection speed reaches 800pcs/h, which is 60% higher than that of traditional manual efficiency, and can operate continuously 24 hours a day, saving labor costs of more than 200,000 yuan per year for a single equipment. Currently, the device has passed the trial verification of Huawei's supply chain supporting enterprises and has been successfully used in batch inspection scenarios of filters for DWDM devices.
"The high-end upgrading of the optical communication industry calls for more sophisticated automation equipment." The person in charge of Harley Automation said that the company has applied for 3 utility model patents for the equipment, which is also another important breakthrough in the field of precision testing after the previous technical achievements. The next step will be to optimize the algorithm for the detection needs of extremely narrowband filters, and plan to launch customized versions suitable for the fields of medical and laser equipment, and continue to help the manufacturing and upgrading of high-end optical components with technological innovation.