This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority of prior Japanese Patent Application No. 2008-78531, filed on Mar. 25, 2008, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
The embodiment discussed herein is related to a wiring work support device which supports a manual wiring work for a printed-circuit board (PCB) with parts mounted thereon.
When a printed-circuit board with parts mounted thereon may be, for example, changed in design or repaired, a wiring pattern is cut, or a wiring work is performed. The wiring work is a work for soldering both ends of a jumper line to a lead or pad of a semiconductor chip. The pad is a conductive land, which is provided in a printed-circuit board for the purpose of connecting a lead of a surface mounting part to the printed-circuit board by means of solder.
The wiring work is performed for adjustment, whereby it is applied to a small lot and varies. Particularly, the wiring work for repair is different from one printed-circuit board to another, and therefore, the wiring work is manually performed by an operator with a soldering iron. Considering that the wiring work is a return work and a manual work, the reduction of the time needed for the wiring work contributes significantly to the reduction of the whole tact time and the reduction of labor costs.
A related work support device instructs, on a display, an operator to perform a work on the basis of input information such as a work drawing and a mounting drawing. Usually, the device provides an effect of reduction of a fixed period of time in terms of eliminating setup such as arrangement for a work drawing from a paper-based work instruction.
In
An operator obtains the position information of an object chip from a paper work instruction or an instruction on a display to run the position information with the actual printed-circuit board, and, thus, to specify the position of the chip on the printed-circuit board. Thereafter, the operator counts the position of a lead, to which a jumper line may be attached, from the end to specify the position. As mentioned above, recently, the reduction of the pitch of a chip is progressed, and therefore, the count of leads is troublesome. Further, it is impossible to mark on the actual printed-circuit board as a product. Therefore, if the operator temporarily looks aside from the printed-circuit board in order to, for example, prepare tools, he needs to specify the position again, and thus, unnecessary work is easily created.
According to an aspect of the embodiment, a wiring work support device which supports a manual wiring work for a printed-circuit board with parts mounted thereon, includes a database capable of storing information of an object lead or an object pad of a part which is an object for the wiring work, an image input part which takes an image of the printed-circuit board, a position specification part which specifies a position of the object lead or the object pad on the printed-circuit board on the basis of information stored in the database and image data from the image input part, and a position teaching part which superposes, marks and displays the position on the printed-circuit board, specified by the position specification part, on an actual printed-circuit board or an image in which the printed-circuit board is displayed.
In keeping with another aspect of an embodiment of this technique, a wiring work supporting method is executed by using a database capable of storing information of an object lead or an object pad of a part which is an object for a wiring work and supports a manual wiring work for a printed-circuit board with parts mounted thereon. The method includes an image input operation of, by an image input part, taking an image of the printed-circuit board, a position specification operation of, by a position specification part, specifying a position of an object lead or an object pad on the printed-circuit board on the basis of information stored in the database and image data from the image input part, and a position teaching operation of, by a position teaching part, superposing, marking and displaying the position on the printed-circuit board, specified in the position specification operation, on an actual printed-circuit board or an image in which the printed-circuit board is displayed.
The object and advantages of the embodiment will be realized and attained by means of the elements and combinations particularly pointed out in the claims.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed are exemplary and explanatory and are not restrictive of the embodiment, as claimed.
Embodiments are illustrated by way of example and not limited by the following figures.
Preferred embodiments of the present invention will be explained with reference to accompanying drawings.
The database 204 stores information of an object to be subjected to the wiring work, that is, an object lead or an object pad of an object part which is a connection source and a connection destination. When the pad is an object for the wiring work, the number of the corresponding lead connected with the pad is registered as an object lead in the database 204, and, at the same time, the X direction distance and the Y direction distance of the pad based on the lead are registered in the database 204. Further, a master image for matching showing an outline of an object chip is registered in the database 204. Still further, an iron tip image for matching showing an outline of an iron tip of a soldering iron as a tool for the wiring work is registered in the database 204.
The image input part 206 takes an image of the printed-circuit board 202 to output image data as streaming data. The position specification part 208 specifies the position of the object lead or the object pad on the printed-circuit board by means of an image processing on the basis of the information stored in the work database 204 and the image data from the image input part 206. The position teaching part 210 superposes, marks and displays the position of the object lead or the object pad on the printed-circuit board, specified by the position specification part 208, on an actual printed-circuit board or an image in which the printed-circuit board is displayed. Hereinafter, the constitution which can realize the functional block illustrated in
As described above, the actual attachment work of a jumper line is often performed through a stationary magnifying glass with the reduction of the pitch of a chip lead in recent years. The function of the magnifying glass is covered by the camera 306 and the display 308, and these equipments are disposed as illustrated in
The information for specifying a printed-circuit board, which is an object for the wiring work, is displayed in the printed-circuit board (PCB) information display area 602. The information for specifying an object chip to which one end of a jumper line may be soldered (for example, combination of the model numbers of chips and the tracking numbers in the PCB) and the information for specifying an object lead or an object pad (for example, a lead number) are respectively displayed in the connection source information display area 604 and the connection destination information display area 606.
An image of all or part of an object PCB monitored by the camera 306 is displayed in the circuit image display area 610. In this image, actual positions 612 and 614 of an object lead or an object pad of an object chip displayed in the connection source information display area 604 and the connection destination information display area 606 are marked and displayed. A soldering iron 616 as a tool for the wiring work is captured by the camera 306 to be displayed in the circuit image display area 610.
The distance from a top end 618 of the soldering iron 616 to one position 612 of an object lead or an object pad (represented by the combination of the X-axis direction distance and the Y-axis direction distance) and the distance from the top end 618 of the soldering iron 616 to the other position 614 of the object lead or the object pad are displayed in the tool information display area 608. Hereinafter, a wiring position teaching processing and a tool information indicating processing illustrated in
The personal computer 310 then matches silk printed characters on the detected chip to thereby detect a chip matching the tracking number in the PCB of the object chip (step 704). The object chip is specified in steps 702 and 704, and the attachment direction is obtained.
When the chip matching the object chip may not be detected at that time, the personal computer 310 prompts the operator to visually detect the object chip and then to input the position of the object chip (steps 706 and 708).
The personal computer 310 then detects each lead position in the chips detected as the object chip by means of an edge extraction processing (step 710). In the edge extraction processing, differential operation is applied to a gradation of a pixel of image data, whereby an edge image is obtained.
The personal computer 310 then counts the detected lead position to thereby detect, as an object lead position, the lead position matching lead number information from the database 204 (step 712).
When the object for the attachment of a wiring is a lead, the personal computer 310 specifies the detected object lead position as the attachment position of a jumper line (steps 714 and 716).
Meanwhile, when the object for the attachment of the wiring is a pad, the personal computer 310 adds the X and Y direction distances of the object pad based on the object lead position to the coordinate of the object lead position (steps 714 and 718). The personal computer 310 then specifies as the attachment position of the jumper line the coordinate of an object pad position obtained by the addition (step 720). When the object for the attachment of the wiring is a pad, the object pad is specified after the detection of the object lead, because if solder is put on the pad itself, it is assumed that it is difficult to stably detect the pad by an image processing.
Finally, the personal computer 310 marks and displays the specified jumper line attachment position in the circuit image display area 610 in the display 308 (step 722). The position specified by the above processings is always superposed and displayed on a streaming image, and therefore, the operator may confirm the position in real time.
The personal computer 310 then determines whether the iron tip of the soldering iron 616 exists in the field of view of the camera 306 (step 804). When the iron tip does not exist therein, the personal computer 310 stops the display of the tool information display area 608 (
Meanwhile, when the iron tips of the soldering iron 616 exists in the field of view of the camera 306, the personal computer 310 detects two slopes 616a of the iron tip illustrated in
The personal computer 310 then calculates the X-axis and Y-axis direction distances from the top end 618 of the soldering iron 616 to an object lead or an object pad (step 812). Finally, the personal computer 310 displays the distance between the iron tip and the object lead or the object pad in the tool information display area 608 (
The projector 1102 projects an image in which the attachment position is displayed on the printed-circuit board 202 to thereby teach the attachment position. In this embodiment, an attachment work space 1104 larger than the work space in
According to the disclosed wiring work support device, the time needed for setup such as visually confirmation of the attachment position of a jumper line may be reduced, and, at the same time, error such as to attach the jumper line to an unintended lead and the inspection process associated with the wiring work may be reduced.
All examples and conditional language recited herein are intended for pedagogical purposes to aid the reader in understanding the invention and the concepts contributed by the inventor to furthering the art, and are to be constructed as being without limitation to such specifically recited examples and conditions, nor does the organization of such examples in the specification relate to a showing of the superiority and inferiority of the invention. Although the embodiments of the present inventions have been described in detail, it should be understood that the various changes, substitutions, and alterations could be made hereto without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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2008-078531 | Mar 2008 | JP | national |