A DESIGN FOR PARTS STORAGE FEEDING IN PC BOARD ASSEMBLY

The flexible, automated, high speed assembly of printed circuit (PC) boards offers productivity gains over hard automation. While significant progress has been made to automate the component insertion on PC boards, there still remains a class of components, commonly referred to as 'odd-form' components, whose handling has posed significant constraints on the flexibility of automation designs. This paper presents conceptual designs for the storage and feeding of such odd-form components to facilitate their automated assembly. Moreover, the problem is made more difficult because the component storage and feeding system technology has lagged behind the development of flexible assembly systems that it supports. In this paper, different design alternatives for the component storage/feeding system and its integration into an overall flexible assembly workstation are presented and quantitatively analysed. With appropriate software control and sensing techniques, these designs will enable a large variety of components to be assembled on a number of different types of PC boards, facilitating flexible, automated assembly at high speeds.