A DYNAMIC POINT SPECIFICATION APPROACH TO SEQUENCING ROBOT MOVES FOR PCB ASSEMBLY

Reducing the time it takes to place components on to printed circuit b oards (PCBs) is a major robotic assembly objective. This paper explore s a robot control approach featuring dynamic choice of pick-and-place points for retrieving and inserting components. In this concept, the c omponent magazine and PCB tray both move to calculated points that min imize the overall robotic assembly time. Compared with that of another approach which employs fixed positions for retrieval and insertion, t he new approach avoids robot waiting time. The same assembly sequence and component magazine assignment was used to test the difference betw een these two approaches. In both models, the PCB worktables and magaz ine are assumed to be mobile and to move at constant velocity between points. Experimental results showed that the proposed dynamic pick-and -place (DPP) approach is superior to the fixed pick-and-place (FPP) ap proach in nearly all cases.