ESI revolutionizes LED manufacturing process with new LED tester

SEMICON West 2011, PORTLAND, USA: ESI Inc., a leading supplier of innovative laser-based manufacturing solutions for the microtechnology industry, introduced the high-speed Model 3800 LED Tester.

ESI’s Model 3800 enables production-scale testing of packaged LEDs with the lowest cost of ownership in the industry. The 3800 features an innovative architecture that utilizes a patented, dual-track, bulk-to-bin handler that has demonstrated in excess of 100 percent throughput improvement and yields in excess of 99.9 percent, resulting in the lowest overall cost of ownership. The company is featuring the Model 3800 this week at the SEMICON West exhibition in San Francisco.

“Consumer adoption of high brightness LED technology depends largely on our customers’ ability to drive down their production costs and improve LED light efficiency through advances in manufacturing technology,” said Vernon Cooke, product manager in ESI’s Components Group. The Model 3800 is the most advanced LED tester on the market and is specifically designed to help our customers achieve the highest yields at the lowest cost of ownership.

ESI has a long, proven history as the market leader in the delivery of automated systems designed for mass-production testing and inspection of small, electronic components, such as multi-layer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs). The company has applied its core technologies of component handling, testing and binning to significantly reduce the cost of ownership for LED manufacturing.

Optimized for superior yield, the Model 3800 offers the following features and benefits:

Yield improvement
* Rotary loader is gentle on LED packages to dramatically reduce chip damage.
* Indexed carriers maintain LEDs in a “nest” to eliminate dropped and scrapped devices.

Throughput improvement
* Patented, dual-track, bulk-to-bin handler processes two LEDs simultaneously, while achieving productivity rates up to 48,000 LEDs/hr (800/min).
* Multiple test stations to maintain highest possible throughput.

Binning accuracy
* Simple, parallel binning process that does not require actuated gates/switches, virtually eliminates mis-binning, and does not limit throughput.

Flexibility
Configurable platform such that each system can be configured to test multiple LED types and testing requirements.

ESI expects to ship its first system to a leading LED manufacturer this quarter.