As the industrial transfer and upgrading, the implementation of the new labor contract law, the economic structure changes bring the rising cost of living in cities, and after 80, 90 staff and liquidity management difficulty, PCB manufacturers are experiencing more and more serious labor shortages and the challenge of rising labor costs, and then bring to the production plan, product quality and profitability. As robots, meanwhile, has promoted the performance and price decline, with “automation equipment and industrial robot operation” to replace the traditional “automation equipment and manual operation” mode of production will become the development trend of PCB industry transition.
An industrial robot, the type and characteristics
Industrial robot is a kind of through the repeated programming and automatic control, able to complete certain operations task in the process of producing multi-functional, more degrees of freedom of mechanical and electrical integration of the automatic mechanical equipment and systems, it combines manufacturing host or production line, can be composed of single or multiple machine automation system, under the unattended, implement handling, welding, such as sorting, assembly and painting a variety of production operation.
The first generation of robots in the United States since the early 1960 s, the rapid development of the development and application of the industrial robot, is increasingly widely used in the production, has become a highly important modern manufacturing automation equipment.
Industrial robot is mainly composed of ontology (including mechanical body parts, motor, reducer) and control (including the drive and control system) of two parts, its role is to use at the end of the actuator instead of hand grasping objects or tools, complete different tasks. At present there are three kinds of mainstream industrial robots, including: SCARA (four axis parallel robot joints), DELTA (parallel robot) and six axis multi-joint robot (including more than six axis of multi-joint robot and derivative of dual-arm robot).
The most significant feature of industrial robot induction has the following three points:
1, programmable. The further development of production automation is a flexible automation. Industrial robots can work with its task and the needs of the environmental changes and programming, so it in small batch more varieties have balanced flexible manufacturing process of high efficiency good function, flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is one of the important component.
2, personified. Industrial robots have similar people walking in mechanical structure, waist, arm, forearm, wrist and hand claw parts, is there a computer in the control. In addition, there are many similar human intelligent industrial robots “biosensor, such as skin type contact sensor, force sensor, a load sensor, vision sensors, acoustic sensor, language features, etc. Sensor to improve the adaptive ability of the industrial robot on the surrounding environment.
3, versatility. In addition to specially designed special industrial robots, general industrial robot when performing different tasks has good generality. Replacement of industrial robot hands, for example, the terminal operator (hand claw, tools, etc.) can perform different tasks.
Second, the industrial robot application cases in the PCB industry
Early industrial robot is mainly used in automobile manufacturing industry, in the process of car production to complete welding, assembling, handling, painting, etc, the link of the robot’s accuracy is not high, speed requirements. But the PCB industry is relatively complex, the application of robot in PCB industry mainly reflected in the process of loading, flip, sorting, positioning and detection, and other functions, to replace artificial cooperate with PCB processing equipment and testing equipment operation. Because of the complexity and the diversity of the PCB with single board, double plate, sandwich plate, plate, flexible plate, soft hard couple, no orifice and perforated plate and so on, led to the front end actuators for more; Along with the requirements of the position precision and beat the requirements of the work, so when the industrial robot application of robot technology and integration technology requirements are also higher. We passed nearly two years of exploration and practice in the industry, to help customers solve problems and satisfy the needs of customers, and accumulated experience in industry application. At present, many of the PCB industry process, we have mature solutions, such as AOI, exposure machine, drill drone (OPE, XZ), silver paste filling holes, inkjet, palm pre stack, the finished plate, OSP, finished cleaning, DOME reverse coated, LCD assembly, etc.
The following focuses on three representative robot application case:
1, six axis multi-joint robot for AOI detection process
Traditional AOI scanning machine is to rely on artificial board, frame and plate, a person look after the two machines doing repetitive actions every day, and just make good circuit board will also send out a pungent smell bring certain harm to human body, AOI scanning machine emits infrared light is an invisible killer. We use a six axis multi-joint robot, replace workers responsible for two of the AOI plate, frame and plate, each class can be completed more than seven hundred pieces of PCB board, release the integrated efficiency can reach 1 piece/min (including AOI machine scanning time). If can further cooperate with machine release of up-down material transit, AGV do fixed-line transhipment connection, can realize fully automated production process.
2, scara robot used in circuit board coil detection process
The laminated coil short circuit of a complete set of testing equipment, also very few on the market, most of the testing equipment is dependent on human, aperture large PCB board is artificial open board into the testing equipment and test equipment, aperture small PCB board need artificial carrying equipment (probe) to testing for each coil. We use SCARA robot can complete with test equipment loading and contrapuntal placed, make a one-off large pore size of the board to all coil of line detection; To the small pore size of the board, we use SCARA fixed probe device performs end, through visual positioning, use the probe to each coil for testing, our equipment is also effectively avoid the manual operation because the coil diameter small or aperture and appear more targets. Compared with the manual operation can significantly improve the efficiency of detection test, and to avoid the quality problems caused by residual.
3, DELTA robot for small PCB finished product packing process
Existing FPC plate are by artificial pick up one by one and put them in the blister tray inside, because FPC soft and thin when picking up the inconvenient so efficiency will be greatly reduced, Delta800 plus a set of visual system can pick from a messy FPC heap qualified and then put into the blister tray in accordance with the requirements, the effect is not inferior to the human. He can reach the speed of 60 / min, can completely replace human to sorting on the plate.
Third, industrial robots replace artificial advantage in the PCB industry
With the auto industry and other manufacturing, industrial robots in the PCB industry instead of the artificial bring many advantages.
1, reduce labor, speed up the work, improve work efficiency. Robot can realize high speed repetitive operations, can be much higher than manual work, resulting in improved work efficiency and reduce artificial cost and management cost.
2, improve operation precision, improve the quality of products. Robot can take advantage of the programming and the visual system, to achieve accurate positioning and repeat precision, effectively improve the quality of the product.
3, avoid the working environment of workers health and safety of potential threats, and save the environment safety.
4, reduce repetitive, boring process impact on the state of workers and led to a decline in the efficiency and quality of and the accident rate.
5, optimizing operation process, reduce the operation space.
6, effectively reduce the material consumption rate.
7, 24 hours of continuous operation and under the black light environment.
8, can make the flexible manufacturing process. PCB industry in the future there will be more and more small batch orders, use of industrial robots can greatly enhance the flexibility of production and achieve fast delivery of orders.
9, brand image and credibility. The application of industrial robots make PCB manufacturer to further enhance the automation level, promoting product quality, production efficiency, cost control, progress of response ability, improve the whole competition strength of the manufacturers in the industry.
Four, industrial robot application prospect in the PCB industry
At present the application of industrial robots in PCB industry has just started, also faces many problems need to be solved. PCB industry many line is a standard product, in the process of robot application subject to the limitations of existing space, is limited by the ability of original equipment, in the face of the influence of different factors in the PCB material, but also promote the intelligent robot, the application of various sensor should also consider for factory training a batch of robot can be operation and maintenance staff.
The future of the application of industrial robots in PCB industry will present the following trend:
1, from a single station or single application, to more than line applications. Existing PCB enterprises want to introduce into robot automated production is difficult, need to spend a lot of money, but can have the condition of single station and single step by transformation, after being achieved significant results, and gradually expand the application range.
2, from the simple application to the AGV robot such as the application of combined with other intelligent equipment. Most of existing between process production line material transfer to manual operation, can be distributed to the robot and AGV orderly combination to achieve material transfer.
3, existing plants is given priority to with local application, the overall planning, setting up new factory will do direct import and applications of AGV robot.
4, through the combination of industrial robot and the Internet of things, will make more intelligent and flexible manufacturing process.