Development of a High Precision Edge Alignment System for Touch-Panel Glass Substrates

Abstract

There are two kinds of alignment systems, marked and unmarked. The glass substrate for touch panels is categorized as an unmarked work piece. Vision based glass substrate alignment (GSA) relies on the edge of the glass. Traditional GSA systems compensate first for angular and then for linear error. This reduces alignment accuracy and increases alignment time and edge detection usually takes longer than 10 ms. This study proposes an effortless edge detection method. This method is very simple and can significantly reduce the time taken to detect the edge to about 6 ms using a 1.3 megapixel image. In this study, a floating center idea is used to control the glass substrate on a high precision coplanar XXY alignment stage. According to the method, users can set the rotation center anywhere as long as it is on the working ( xy) plane. Tolerance prognosis is also considered in this study to help the operator decide if the substrate is usable or should be rejected. The experimental results show alignment repeatability of the x, y, and θ axes to be 1 μm, 1 μm, and 5 arcsec, respectively.