Release of Industry’s First “Placement Monitor” Capable of Capturing the Instant of Component
Pickup and Placement as the “Eyes of the Mounting Process”

JUKI Corporation is to release the Placement Monitor, an industry-leading epoch-making system, as an option for the High-speed Chip Shooter KE-2070 that captures the instant of component pickup and placement using ultra-small cameras attached inside the chip shooter.

In recent years, a large broadening has been seen in electronic equipment manufacturing processes using surface mount technology, which has spread from mobile devices such as mobile phones to electric control units (ECU) for automobiles that increasingly incorporate electronics. In each of these manufacturing work places, tackling progress in high-density mounting and productivity improvement is key, as well as being able to realize an extremely high-order of manufacturing from the point of view of product quality and reliability, including the reduction of manufacturing defects, improvement of first-pass yield, and the securing of traceability.
In the circuit board manufacturing processes for each of these products, although quality control is widely carried out using printed circuit board appearance inspection equipment after solder printing, after component placement, and after soldering, so that a “result” is obtained following the occurrence of a defect, this does not allow direct understanding of the cause of the defect. Additionally, in the process to realize the product quality before mass manufacturing, work that places a great burden on the operator, such as repeatedly analyzing several tens of thousands of test results, or imaging and checking the component pickup and placement actions from outside the machine using high-speed cameras, will have to be carried out in order to eliminate the causes of defects.

With the release of the Placement Monitor, detailed monitoring of the mounting process is possible using the ultra-small cameras built into the High-speed Chip Shooter KE-2070 head unit to capture images during the component pickup and placement for each nozzle.
The development of this function, which allows capturing of the instant of pickup and placement inside the shooter has been realized for the first time by JUKI, and can be said to be an industry-leading epoch-making system for customers who are tackling high-order product quality control.

The defect analyzing tool for mass production, the work efficiency improvement tool when starting up new model types, and the traceability for product quality assurance as recording equipment can also be utilized.
As the “eyes of the mounting process”, the Placement Monitor is an innovative product that opens up the future for customers who are seeking to maintain safety and high reliability, as well as customers who are aiming to improve product quality.
In the future, JUKI will continue to support its customers in all aspects including productivity, product quality, cost, and management.

Features

• Using the ultra-small cameras mounted on the KE-2070 head, imaging and saving of the component pickup and placement actions can be carried out in real time.
• Due to the camera arrangement that does not interfere with the component pickup and placement actions, and the high image transfer speed, imaging and recording can be carried out without adversely affecting the production tact.
• Because execution can be carried out inside existing shooter production programs, it is not necessary to create new programs, so that special education and training for operations and man-hours for programming will also not be required.
• Defect Cause Analysis: When defects occur, analysis of the causes can be carried out using the imaging data.
  Using the Movie Mode and Digital Zoom Function, analysis of pickup errors and confirmation of extremely small components such as 0402 components (0.4 x 0.2mm size chip components) can be easily carried out.
• Image Database Management: Captured images are linked to the information sent from the shooter and are stored in a database.
  It is possible to select detailed searching conditions from the related information such as the circuit boards, placement points, nozzles and feeders, to narrow down the read-out images.
• Component Presence or Absence Judging: Comparison is carried out of the images before component placement and after component placement, and judging is carried out of whether or not the component is present on the circuit board.
  In the situation where it is judged that components have run out, the production will be temporarily halted.
• Set-up Assistance: It is possible to save an image taken when component placement has been correctly carried out as the master image, and to compare this master image against the images captured during production.
  This will be convenient when starting up production of new model types and for carrying out defect cause analysis immediately after switching programs.

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