Patent ID: 8714015

Claim:
A joint quality inspection apparatus for inspecting a quality of a joint formed through ultrasonic joining of a bonding item to a bonding target member by applying ultrasound to a tool while pressing the bonding item with the tool, the apparatus comprising: a joining waveform detecting means for detecting at least one of joining waveforms generated during a bonding process; a characteristic feature extracting means for extracting, from the joining waveform detected by the joining waveform detecting means, a characteristic feature having a correlation with a post-durability-test physical quantity based on which a quality required for the joint after a durability test can be evaluated; a memory means for preliminarily storing therein an equation for calculating the post-durability-test physical quantity; a post-durability-test physical quantity calculating means for calculating the post-durability-test physical quantity of the joint from the characteristic feature extracted by the characteristic feature extracting means using the equation stored in the memory means; a quality evaluation means for evaluating the joint quality of the joint based on a comparison between the post-durability-test physical quantity calculated by the post-durability-test physical quantity calculating means and a predetermined threshold; and a replication probability evaluation means for evaluating a replication probability of the bonding process by comparing the characteristic feature extracted by the characteristic feature extracting means and a characteristic feature in the bonding process in which good joint quality is ensured, wherein the quality evaluation means determines the joint quality of the joint as good only when the replication probability evaluation means determines the replication probability of the bonding process as good and the joint quality is determined as good by evaluation based on the post-durability-test physical quantity calculated by the post-durability-test physical quantity calculating means.