Austomated visual inspection(AVI) capability has become an important key component in the automated manufacturing system. In such a visual inspection system an intensity(or color) image of a scene is quickly affected by optical property of objects, condition and roughness of surface, lens and filters, image sensor property and lighting system. In particular, the lighting system disign is the most important factor, since it affects overall performance of the visual system. For fast and cheap automated visual inspection system it is important to obtain the good image quality which results from careful attention to the design of the lighting system. In this paper, the lighting subsystem of AVI system is analysed for the inspection of printed circuit board(PCB) patterns. The spectral reflectance of materials, which are composed of PCB, is measured for choosing the light source. The reflection property is theoretically obtained by a reflection model and also obtained by experiments which measure intensity with varying the viewing direction of image sensor and the lighting direction of illuminator. The illumination uniformity of a ring-type illuminator. The lighting system is designed based upon the experimental results and theoretial analysis.