Some applications—such as semiconductor manufacturing—use sophisticated inspection and review stations to carry out process control. To build these systems, some of which are utilizing cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductor equipment manufacturers turn to OEM manufacturers like Evident to provide components. When choosing which parts to integrate into their systems, the quality, size, and flexibility of each component is critical to making a high-quality final product.

As a long-time OEM supplier, we offer an extensive range of objectives and other optical components to support equipment and instrument designers building microscope-based imaging systems. These components help engineers design high-quality optical inspection equipment easily and efficiently.

In this post, we discuss how we slimmed down one critical component—the control box! If your microscope-based system has motorized components, like an illuminator, focus sensing unit, light source, or nosepiece, then a control box is the brain that controls them. In this case, the smaller the brain, the better.

Control Box Options

We offer three control box options, each designed for different uses. Since the model names can be confusing, I break it down below:

• Motorized illuminators: if you only need to control motorized epi-brightfield/darkfield illuminators, I recommend the BXC-CBB.
• Illuminators and autofocus: if you need to control both motorized illuminators and a focus sensing unit for autofocus, the BXC-CBE1 in combination with the BXC-CBB is your best option.
• Minimalist: for those who want to keep their setup as simple and lightweight as possible, we recommend the BXC-CBRML, which can be used to control a motorized revolving nosepiece, LED light source, and the slider for our unique MIX illumination.

We designed each control box with a focus on saving place and enabling maximum flexibility on where it’s mounted and how it’s configured within your product.

How We Made Our OEM Control Boxes Smaller

We opted to use an AC adapter to slim down our control boxes to offer our OEM customers more flexibility. It enabled us to reduce our control boxes’ footprint by 66% and volume by 91% compared to the previous-gen control box with the same functions (BX-UCB). These slim, lightweight control boxes are naturally easier to mount, but we took an extra step to make them even more configurable.

Figure 1: Size comparison of the BXC-CBB and BX-UCB

Figure 2: The BXC-CBB + BXC_CBE1 with the BX-UCB behind them.

These new controllers can be mounted to various places in your equipment, such as the floor, wall, or ceiling, using four commercially available M4 screws. Leaving space for heat dissipation is not required, providing greater flexibility when designing your product. If your design calls for both a BXC-CBB and BXC-CBE1, they can be stacked using commercially available studs (Figure 2) or mounted on a wall (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Stacked BXC-CBB and BXC-CBE1

Figure 4. Wall-mounted BXC-CBB and BXC-CBE1

To learn more about how our active autofocus units or our high-quality optical components can be incorporated into your microscope design, please click here and contact us.