Automated material inspection systems – a worthwhile investment?

Material and surface testing is a central component of quality assurance in nearly all branches of industry – from automotive to semiconductors and electronics to aerospace and beyond. It ensures that materials and components reliably meet the required properties.  

While many tests can be performed manually, they quickly reach their limits when quality requirements increase, quantities are high, and cycle times are short. Fully and partially automated measuring systems that are directly integrated into the production process enable significantly faster and more reliable testing processes. The result: shorter throughput times, accurate measuring results, and reliable quality control.  

Automated material testing systems are used in the following areas, for example:

• In roll-to-roll processing, where electronic devices are manufactured on a roll of flexible plastic, flexible glass, or metal foil.

• Within conveyor systems that transport products on automatic or semi-automatic conveyor belts through a warehouse or production facility.

• When analyzing liquids for example in the electroplating, pharmaceutical, food, or cosmetics industries.

• In Wafer processing for semiconductor chips.
• And much more

An increasing number of companies are integrating automation into their quality assurance processes to keep up with rising quality requirements and accelerate production cycles. Automated material testing systems offer you, the manufacturer, decisive competitive advantages, as they sustainably improve quality, speed, and cost-effectiveness:

Increased efficiency

Quality assurance often involves repetitive and time-consuming testing tasks. Automating these processes makes testing significantly faster, more efficient, and independent of manual intervention. This shortens the overall throughput time of your products and increases output. At the same time, you relieve your employees of routine tasks so they can focus their valuable time on value-adding tasks. The result is higher productivity, lower costs, and stable, reproducible quality.

More accurate results  

Even with a high level of technical expertise, human error cannot be completely avoided. The smallest deviations can cause serious quality problems in the end product. This is particularly true in industries with the highest safety and quality requirements, such as the automotive industry or the aerospace industry.

Automated measuring solutions significantly reduce these risks, often to the point of completely eliminating manual sources of error. Computer-aided measuring systems offer maximum measuring accuracy and repeatability, which is virtually impossible to achieve with manual measurement. The result is reliable measuring data, a stable quality assurance process, and higher quality end products – while reducing scrap and rework costs.

Whether coating thickness measurement, material analysis, or material testing​​​​​​​, our automated measuring solutions cover a wide range of applications and can be integrated seamlessly into your production environment. Our measuring systems deliver fast and accurate measurements, quickly paying for your investment. We offer the following automated measuring solutions, including:

• our FISCHERSCOPE® MMS® Automation for inline measurement of coating thickness and material testing.

• our FISCHERSCOPE® X-RAY 5000 for precise measurement of thin layers on large substrates, e.g. in photovoltaics.

• our FISCHERSCOPE® X-RAY XDV®-µ SEMI, a closed system for fully automated measurement of microstructures on wafers.  

• our FISCHERSCOPE® X-RAY 4000, which measures the thickness of coatings during the strip electroplating process, including stamped parts, metal coatings on foils, and more.
• our FISCHERSCOPE® XAN® LIQUID ANALYZER, for efficient inline solution analysis for electroplating baths.