Some of the major enhancements are ...

Some of the major enhancements are eliminating head contention, reducing or eliminating nozzle changes, supporting user-defined nozzles, supporting large nozzles for owners 2 and 3, and being able to define multiple part data for a given part number. The period time improvement exceeds the original goal of 5% and the be the effect at one surface mount center was more than 16% across hand-created and optimized recipes. The solution helps the pair the high-volume and the high-mix centers

Reduction of placement period time in an assembly line is the same of the major goals in a surface soar shop. It is more important in a high-volume workshop than in a high-mix store because most of the assembly time is exhausted in part placement. The reduction of placement period time at high-volume centers would have a higher impact than at our high-mix centers

HP confesss many Fuji IP2 machines at our surface be built up centers, one on each line. The Fuji IP2 machine is a fine-pitch pick-and-place machine capable of placing parts from falter stick, and waffle feeders. It is considered a general-purpose pick-and-place machine because of its ability to place a wide range of parts. It has brace heads, which alternately pick up parts from the feeder and place them upon the panel. Each head has couple holders, one with a fixed nozzle and single with an automatic nozzle. A fixed nozzle must be installed into the fixed owner before the machine starts placing parts. An automatic nozzle of size s M, L, or LL can be picked up by the agency of the automatic holder from a nozzle station. The nozzle station has six nozzles: undivided S nozzle, one M nozzle, sum of two units L nozzles, and two LL nozzles. The s and M nozzles are shared between the sum of two units automatic holders of the pair heads. Each automatic holder has its hold L and LL nozzles; they are not shared between the sum of two units automatic holders.

Since the s and M nozzles are shared between the brace automatic holders, it is important that the succession of placement be arranged likewise that the two automatic possessors do not require the s or M nozzle at the same time. If they do, depending upon the particular Fuji IP2's firmware, either undivided side will halt until the other side finishes its placement and releases the nozzle, or the IP2 software will crash. In either case, head contention is created, which is a question at issue for IP2 placement machines.

The Fuji IP2 machine has slot numbers 1 by means of 37, 51 through 87, and 101 between the sides of 110. Slots 101 through 110 are used by way of the waffle unit. If the waffle unit is installed, it interferes with the machine and makes slot 1 by the agency of 3 inaccessible. Slots 1 to 37 and 51 to 87 can be used for mounting either stagger feeders or stick feeders. Slot 101 to 110 are used for waffle feeders

The IP2 machine has a number of of constraints. barely one of the automatic owners (holder 1) can access waffle parts from slot 101 to 110 This proprietor can also access slots 4 to 37 if a waffle unit is installed or slot 1 to 37 if no waffle unit is installed. The other automatic possessor (holder 4) can access slot 51 to 87 united of the fixed holders (holder 2) can access slot 4 to 37 (not 1 to 37) and the other fixed owner (holder 3) can access slot 51 to 84 (not 51 to 87) The couple fixed holders 2 and 3 can pick up parts up to 35 mm in height and the couple automatic holders can pick up parts up to 10 mm in height.

Problem

The issues related to the Fuji IP2 are in brace categories. One category consists of the issues that contract the placement cycle time, so as use of the nearest device, use of multiple part data, the ability to assign a part to bath sides, and the ability to assign placements to possessors based on reference designators. The other category consists of the issues that make the machine perform correctly. The main item in this category is head contention. If head contention present itselfs for certain IP2 firmware the machine halts and the user must change the succession of the recipe to scour the machine again.

The Methods

In this section, we describe our solution for each issue related to the Fuji IP2 machine. This includes elimination of head contention, support of the nearest device mechanism of the IP2, support for user-defined nozzles as it is as a modified medium nozzle for owners 2 and 3, use of multiple part data for a part number, and assignment of a part to the two sides of the machine to achieve a better head balance.

Our general solution is as follows: we assign placements to possessors to balance the load among the four possessors In the process, we consider first the placements that have slot already assigned. This is the case when the part numbers are in the input setup Then we assign slot to those placements that do not have slot in the input setup This general solution is used for the one and the other setup and sequence modules. In the order of succession module, all the placements have their slot assigned.

In the following sections, we describe many issues which are considered when assigning placements to possessors Our solutions have been incorporated in setup and succession generation modules for the Man-Link recipe generation scheme which is used by all HP surface soar centers that have Fuji IP2 machines. Other Man-Link enhancements are discussed in the article forward page 84.