Authors : Masri Ayob and Mohd Zakree Ahmad Nazri
Abstract: Surface mount device placement machines are designed to place electronic components onto a printed circuit board. In this research, researchers improve the throughput of an economical and medium speed surface mount device placement machine that has four fixed feeder carriers, a fixed printed circuit board table, two vision cameras, a tool bank, a trash bin and a positioning arm head. A head (which is moveable in both X and Y axes simultaneously) is equipped with two pipettes. This research has been adapted from the approach of Magyar (which they applied to a different machine). As in their method, researchers adopt a hierarchical approach. The first stage is to determine the assignment of nozzles to the pipettes that aims to minimise the nozzle change operations and the number of placement groups in order to improve machine throughput. By using the output from the first stage (nozzle assignment) as input to the second stage determines the component pick-and-place schedule. Due to the problem constraints, researchers have to modify the first stage of the Magyar approach and have designed a new approach for sequencing the component pick-and-place operation. Researchers also integrate the Magyar approach with a random descent method in determining the nozzle assignment. Computational results indicate that on average, the approach is superior to Magyar’s approach by 4.3% when considering components placed per hour.
Masri Ayob and Mohd Zakree Ahmad Nazri, 2012. Improving the Throughput of Component Placement Machines by Nozzle Optimisation. International Journal of Signal System Control and Engineering Application, 5: 31-46.