Accurate Alignment of Laminate Materials Using Sensor-Based Robot Techniques

Assembly accuracies of 0.05-0.1 mm, needed for electronic product manufacture, are attainable with current automated manufacturing equipment. Aggressive electronic system designs will require manufacturing accuracies in the range of 0.005-0.01 mm. A system and strategy is described here tofabricate circuit boards requiring alignment accuracies of 7.5 pm using existing automation equipment with enhancements and typical manufacturing linefixtures. The system, configured as a pilot workcell, consisted of an IBM 7576 coarse positioning robot, a fine positioning manipulator, an optical sensing system and a unique bracing method to reduce environmental disturbances. The strategy was to use a coarse/flne placement technique with sensing to align, stack and bond individual test laminates with pattems of 100 p m holes. The results showed that pairs of holes were consistently aligned to 2-5 pm which surpasses the 7.5 pm manufacturing requirement.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1994
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Andrew E. Brennemann, Robert Hammer, Ralph L. Hollis, William V. Jecusco II
• Keywords: Assembly Accuracies, Current Automated Manufacturing, ICRA 1994, Manufacturing Accuracies, Robotics