inspection of printed circuits on mylar substrates poses special problems, both manually and automatically. manual processes are not practical on a continuous basis, and computer vision techniques require the system to locate features under conditions of low contrast both for detection of the mylar, and for the circuits themselves. the system discussed in this paper offers the advantages of inspection of every print, closed loop control on a continuous basis, and the ability to acquire statistical process control data the system has resulted in improved quality and consistent location of the silk screened circuits on the mylar. the design of the control and inspection system included two main hardware components' the image processing and analysis component is based on the intelledex 386 computer vision system (v386) coupled to an ibm pc-at compatible host, and the automatic control component is based on a compumotor-3000 stepper motor controller supplied by honeywell