Pure porn! Those chip shooters look a lot of fun. Do they have component "magazines" that drop the chips down vertically? Is there any positioning feedback for each individual component placement? I think that the "Dogs Danglies " pick and place gadgets have onboard cameras that make minute adjustments to the vacuum head position just before they drop every single component. Well, that's what our board assemblers told us.....(they would, wouldn't they...?)
I never fail to be impressed with the people who come up with production line machines. Enormous respect....and there are still quite a lot of them in the UK, despite the rubbish the Media would have us believe.
As a general rule, they pick the component out of tape at the rear, the next position will do the main rotation (90, 180, 270 degrees), a few positions later there is the camera that detects the component angle, then fine rotation adjustment. So, If it should be at 90 degrees but the machine sees it at 95 it will rotate it back 5 degrees. Also in there is a line sensor that measures the components thickness. If all that's OK then the component is placed, if not it is rejected in to a waste box.
Im not sure what you mean by vertical magazines, I think there may be some confusion with the nozzles sometimes being called the Z axis. Here are the feeders with the reels on at the rear of the machine...
View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qxlSXtGRJ8
Usually at the start of a run (or start of a shift) the operators will do a nozzle centre check. This uses the component camera t look up at the nozzles and get a reading of where the centre of the nozzle is. When the machine is placing a component it will then take the individual nozzles centre position into account and adjust the placement. Though with modern machines I would expect any nozzle that has a visible centre that is different to the rest to be swapped for a new one.
If seems that the turret machines are on the way out in the UK. Not so many large volume manufactures any more. Also, the gantry style pick and place have become smaller and a lot quicker. This gives a lot of flexibility. I have seen up to 8 Fuji AIMS in a row, so that's 2 lots of 80 nozzles sharing the load. A single pick and place machine probably cant match the turrets machines one on one, but when they gang up...
I have been programming a Mirtec AOI for the last year...
View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQODp2-AqDM
Just so you can get an appreciation of how fast this happens, the Fuji CP4 could do a full turret rotation in just over a second, and that will place up to 18 components. Sounds like a Gatling at full chat!!!
The video is not that good anyway...
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