Integrated user interface design for electronics remanufacturing systems

Electronics manufacturing has evolved through the 1990s as technology and production parameters have changed. Surface mount components have become the choice of industry to solve problems resulting from complex PCB designs. Enabling technologies and consumer demand have shifted production away from high volume identical parts to lower volume customized parts. Production lines are regularly stopped, reconfigured for new parts, and run for fewer piece counts. Reconfigured lines may produce defective boards during first time process optimization runs. As the piece cost of more complex completed circuit boards increases and production quantities decrease, rework of defective boards caused by process change-over and normal production variations has become an important part of the manufacturing process. Higher levels of circuit functionality substantially increase the cost of scrapping the boards and tighter environmental regulations make disposal of boards more difficult. Rework is often the only economical choice, but surface mount component lead pitch has also been decreasing, which has increased the required training and skill level of the rework operators. Automated rework provides a solution to these problems. This paper describes an intuitive GUI control structure for the automated rework of fine pitch components. Results from experiments performed on the prototype system with this user interface show that vision guidance, removal, cleaning, solder paste dispensing, component placement, and laser soldering can all be performed successfully for automated PCB rework with highly reliable solder joints.