Development of control system to automate the PCB pin insertion process

Abstract

This thesis describes the development of the control system that runs the automated pin insertion machine in a surface mount technology assembly line. The control system is divided into 2 subsystems viz. pin sorting and pin insertion. The detailed design of the control system and its components is discussed, along with the programming of the Programmable Logic Controller for both subsystems. The development of the machine vision application used to sort the right pin types is described, with an emphasis on the image processing tools used. Applicability and robustness of these tools in the context of the pin insertion machine is described. The developed application can capture images and process them in 92 ms, significantly lower than the maximum allowable time of 500 ms. The vision system could totally eliminate the incidence of a wrong pin being passed on to the insertion head. Among the right pins, 98% of the right pins in the right orientation and 100% the pins in the wrong orientation were detected.