A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
Pick and place machines are generally used to manufacture electronic circuit boards. A blank printed circuit board is usually supplied to the pick and place machine, which then picks electronic components from component feeders, and places such components upon the board. The components are held upon the board temporarily by solder paste, or adhesive, until a subsequent step in which the solder paste is melted or the adhesive is fully cured.
Pick and place machine operation is challenging. Since machine speed corresponds with throughput, the faster the pick and place machine runs, the less costly the manufactured board will be. Additionally, placement accuracy is extremely important. Many electrical components, such as chip capacitors and chip resistors are relatively small and must be accurately placed on equally small placement locations. Other components, while larger, have a significant number of leads or conductors that are spaced from one another at a relatively fine pitch. Such components must also be accurately placed to ensure that each lead is placed upon the proper pad. Thus, not only must the machine operate extremely fast, but it must also place components extremely accurately.
In order to enhance the quality of board manufacture, fully or partially populated boards are generally inspected after the placement operation(s), both before and after solder reflow, to identify components that are improperly placed or missing or any of a variety of errors that may occur. Automatic systems that perform such operation(s) are highly useful because they help identify component placement problems prior to solder reflow. This allows substantially easier rework and/or the identification of defective boards after reflow that are candidates for rework. One example of such a system is sold under the trade designation Model KS Flex available from Cyberoptics Corporation of Golden Valley, Minn. This system can be used to identify such problems as alignment and rotation errors; missing and flipped components; billboards; tombstones; component defects; incorrect polarity; and wrong components.
Identification of errors pre-reflow provides a number of advantages. Rework is easier; closed-loop manufacturing control is facilitated; and less work in-process exists between error generation and remedy. While such systems provide highly useful inspection, they do consume plant floor-space as well as programming time and maintenance efforts.
One relatively recent attempt to provide the benefits of after-placement inspection located within a pick a place machine itself is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,317,972 to Asai et al. That reference reports a method for mounting electric components where an image of a mounting location is obtained prior to component placement, and compared with an image of the mounting location after component placement to inspect the placement operation at the component level.
While the disclosure of Asai et al. marks one attempt to employ in-machine component level inspection, there remains much work to be done. For example, the disclosure of Asai et al. teaches acquiring two images, before and after the placement of the component to determine placement characteristics of the component. While this approach is useful for determining the absence or presence of a component after placement, there are several important machine characteristics of the placement machine that can cause placement errors of components that this approach does not address.
One major common cause for placement defects in pick and place machine are errors in the setup and programming. Pick and place operations are inherently complicated, depending on many setup parameters and variables to be adjusted properly to ensure all components are placed correctly on the workpiece. Typical circuit boards can contain hundreds or thousands of components, often with hundreds of different component types. The pick and place machine program contains information about the placement location and orientation of all the components, the type of nozzle required to place each of the components, and information about the board size and location. Additionally, the component feeders must be loaded on the pick and place in positions that reflect the anticipated location of the parts by the placement program. Machine parameters, such as placement speed, vacuum amount, nozzle travel, board support placement and calibration parameters must all be set properly to ensure correct placement of all the components.
When required to program the pick and place machine for a new product, the operator will assemble several workpieces and inspect them to determine if the setup parameters and variables are correctly adjusted. This inspection step is typically referred to as “first article inspection.” After adjustment to the pick and place machine, several more workpieces are assembled and inspected to verify that the causes for failures were corrected. Often, it takes several cycles of adjustment and inspection until the pick and place machine reliably places all components on the workpiece. Since the current state of the art for “first article” board inspection requires expensive automatic optical inspection machines or human inspectors, the inspection does not occur until the board is fully assembled and reflowed. The results of this process are a long delay to setup a circuit board production line for a new product and the generation of expensive scrap in the form of inoperable circuit boards. The amount of time required for first article inspection ranges from 5 minutes to 5 hours depending on the complexity of the verification. Typical duration of the first article inspection process is about 30 minutes. These delays increase the complexity of changing a manufacturing line over to a new product, as well as adding cost to the manufactured boards.
In addition to machine setup, problems during machine operation over time can occur due change and drift of process parameters. Empty feeders, wrong components placed in the feeders, dry solder paste, and wrong board orientations are a few examples of problems that occur during the operation of the pick and place machine. When such problems occur, it is extremely important that such problems be diagnosed and remedied very quickly to return the line to manufacturing viable boards. When a production line is shut down for diagnostics and repair, expensive technician time is required to remedy the problems. Moreover, as the repair is performed, the technician or an operator may have to run the line through yet another setup cycle in order to verify that the problem is fixed, and that boards can be reliably produced.
Embodiments of the present invention improve upon component level inspection performed by pick and place machines. Such improvements include providing first article inspection in pick and place machines by collecting images of the placement event inside the machine and identifying errors as they happen. By displaying this information as it is generated on the machine, the operator can take prompt and effective corrective actions.
In one embodiment, images are taken of the placement location before and after placement of the component. These images are then processed and displayed to the operator shortly after the placement has completed. In addition to the images, key measurements are displayed to the operator to assist in the diagnosis of problems as they occur. Key features that are presented to the operator include absence/presence detection, vibration detection and manual visual inspection.
In another embodiment, images and key parameters extracted from the images are collected and stored for later review. Key process parameters can be compared and trend analysis is performed over the assembly of multiple workpieces. A knowledge database is then established to track symptomatic images and corrective actions taken as a result of the displayed symptoms. Further, the images and data collected in the database can be shared with experts located away from the pick and place machine to diagnose and correct problems. One example of such location is the rework stations found at the end of the production line. Another example includes sending the images to the pick and place machine vendor so that the vendor's experts can be enlisted in determining the cause of the problems.
These and other advantages of embodiments of the present invention will be apparent from the description below.
In accordance with embodiments of the present invention, first article inspection is performed inside a pick and place machine. The operator of the machine is thus provided with real time feedback regarding problems occurring during the placement operation. Using this real time feedback, problems with the setup of the pick and place machine can be diagnosed and corrected quickly and before the whole board is completed, thereby reducing scrap rates.
Pick and place machine diagnostics are also aided in accordance with embodiments of the present invention. For example, problems are diagnosed rapidly by displaying errors directly to the operators during the placement to facilitate the correction of the problem before the problem produces unacceptable amounts of scrap. Also, by sharing placement information with other locations, both inside and outside the factory, even more expeditious diagnosis and problem resolution is possible.
During initial setup of the pick and place machine, many parameters and variables must be optimized and set correctly to ensure precise assembly of the workpiece. The following is a list of setup parameters that generally need to be determined:
Embodiments of the present invention generally obtain two or more successive images of the intended placement location (i.e. before placement and after). Since placement occurs relatively quickly, and since slowing machine throughput is extremely undesirable, it is sometimes necessary to acquire two successive images very quickly since cessation of the relative motion between the placement head and the board is fleeting. For example, it may be necessary to acquire two images within a period of approximately 10 milliseconds.
In accordance with various aspects of the present invention, rapid acquisition of multiple successive images can be done in different ways. One way is using commercially available CCD devices and operating them in a non-standard manner to acquire images at a rate faster than can be read from the device. Further details regarding this image acquisition technique can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 6,549,647, assigned to the Assignee of the present invention. Yet another way to rapidly acquire multiple successive images is to use multiple CCD arrays arranged to view the intended placement location through common optics.
To be useful to the pick and place operator, images and data captured by the image acquisition device 100 requires a device to display the information.
Although the present invention has been described with reference to preferred embodiments, workers skilled in the art will recognize that changes may be made in form and detail without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.
The present application is a continuation of and claims priority of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/979,750, filed Nov. 2, 2004, the content of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety, which application is based on and claims the benefit of U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 60/518,260, filed Nov. 7, 2003, the content of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
Number | Date | Country | |
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60518260 | Nov 2003 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
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Parent | 10979750 | Nov 2004 | US |
Child | 11520142 | Sep 2006 | US |