Pin on Circuit Board Soldering System

This workcell was developed for the Microelectronics Group of Lucent Technologies. The workcell features several innovative technologies to form an advanced automation system. The cell incorporates an Adept Scara robot with a MV-8 controller, a bowl feeder, a light-based soldering system, a wirefeeder and pneumatic pin gripper, multiple heating sources, real-time system monitoring and error logging, and a graphical operator console.

Depending on configuration, different size pins are blown from the bowl feeder to a soldering location, where they're soldered onto a PCB by a Panasonic Soft Beam light-based soldering tool. Boards are fed into position using a walking-beam-style transfer, and Lucent CAD data is input to specify the exact coordinates of the circuit boards and pins.

The end-effector is the heart of the system. The end-effector uses five pneumatic lines to grip and rapidly and precisely move the wirefeeder, soldering tool and pins.

Using Soft Beam soldering technology cuts the system's soldering time to a fraction of a conventional soldering iron. The Soft Beam not only solders faster than conventional irons, it's also more reliable and requires less maintenance because it never comes in physical contact with the soldering wire. Just as important, both the circuit boards and soldering wire are preheated to just below the solder melting point. The preheated solder retains enough mechanical strength to be rapidly positioned. Yet it requires less heating energy during the soldering process which shaves more time from the soldering function.

An Adept Scara robot is used to move the Soft Beam soldering tool to various soldering points on the board and control all pneumatic functions of the system. To further enhance productivity, the system provides in-process control capabilities.

Prior to implementing this workcell, Lucent's manufacturing process required workers to manually place pins on circuit boards whose resistors, capacitors and other components were held by solder paste. Because the paste had not solidified, the slightest bump could cause alignment errors, requiring a board to be reworked. The new system not only offers an impressive return on investment, it delivers better quality as well.

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