Vertically separated pass through conveyor system and method in surface mount technology process equipment

Abstract

Disclosed herein is a modular system for manufacturing printed circuit boards. The system comprises a plurality of pieces of processing equipment including at least one assembly material applicator, and at least one electronic component placement machine, and a transport system configured to transport circuit boards from the at least one stencil printer to the at least one electronic component placement machine, the system including an upper track and a lower track disposed below the upper track.

Description

RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C.§119(e) to U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 61 / 115,954, entitled “SMALL FOOTPRINT STENCIL PRINTER CONCEPTS,” filed on Nov. 19, 2008, to U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 61 / 144,651, entitled “SMALL FOOTPRINT STENCIL PRINTER CONCEPTS,” filed on Jan. 14, 2009, to U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 61 / 176,797, entitled “DYNAMIC PASS-THROUGH LANE SIZING IN SURFACE-MOUNT TECHNOLOGY-SMT PROCESS EQUIPMENT,” filed on May 8, 2009, to U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 61 / 176,801, entitled “DEFECT REJECTION STATION IN SURFACE-MOUNT TECHNOLOGY SMT PROCESS EQUIPMENT,” filed on May 8, 2009, to U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 61 / 176,803, entitled “ADJACENT PRINTER CONTROL IN SURFACE-MOUNT TECHNOLOGY-SMT PROCESS EQUIPMENT,” filed on May 8, 2009, to U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 61 / 176,804, entitled “PRINTER CONTROL OF ADJACENT EQUIPMENT IN SURFACE-MOUNT TECHNOLOGY-SMT PROCESS EQUIPMENT,” filed on...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0008]In accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure, there is provided a method of processing electronic substrates. The method comprises loading a first electronic substrate onto an upper track of a first stencil printer, raising the upper track of the first stencil printer, bringing a lower track of the first sten

Problems solved by technology

Dynamic sizing of conveyor tracks to handle different sizes of circuit boards may not be feasible on some dual-lane implementations because one practice is to use two printers in series and print one circuit board on the front lane of one machine and another circuit board on the rear lane of the other machine.

Because the print lanes typically use specific board tooling, the lane size cannot easily be adjusted.

This restriction limits pass through capacity of the system to the same size board or to a board size that is equal to or larger than the board being printed.

The placement machines are typically the more expensive equipment in the production line, and so effort is made to keep them operating at maximum capacity.

Errors discovered in the printing process may require manual intervention to rectify, which can impact the flow of materials into the placement system, decreasing the utilization of the placement system.

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