Robotic Micromanipulation for Active Pin Alignment in Electronic Soldering Industry

Abstract

In the context of robotic high-precision soldering, we propose an image-based pin alignment control method based on active plastic deformation. The plastic deformation is a well-known failure mechanism in most situations, which includes a phenomenon that the objects do not return original state. Here, in contrast to this convention, we utilize the plastic deformation of the metal pin to do pin alignment for improving the quality of the solder joint. To address this, we embed the springback compensation into the image-based pin alignment controller. Lastly, the proposed strategy is successfully demonstrated and evaluated in a practical modified robotic manipulation system. The result shows that the alignment error is less than 20µm, which is far less than pin alignment without considering plastic deformation and elastic recovery. This work considers active plastic deformation and spontaneous elastic recovery of soft object, which would greatly promote the use of robotics in micromanufacturing and microfabrication in lad and industry, especially for soft objects.