Regularly I am reverse engineering a PCB. With this work, it is hard to make a photo of all the components. The problem there is that there is a parallax effect which makes it impossible to do accurate measurements. Also, higher components obfuscate the view of the PCB areas beside the components.

My eye caught the Edmund Optics 56677 SilverTL 0.40X TML Telecentric Lens. With this lens it is possible to have a view from exactly above the PCB to make photos. With a telecentric lens it is only possible to photograph items which are the size of the lens.

So now to the main object of the article, why not make a scanning mechanism to photograph areas of the PCB and then automatically stitch them together. Below is a first setup I was thinking of, a Aluminium T-Slot table with attached some motion components.

You can see a NSK ground ballscrew with a W1510FA ball screw nut. and a HiWin linear motor. I will be comparing the performance of both systems to see which is suited best.

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