Design of a robotic workstation for component insertion

The characteristics of electronics manufacture have changed: instead of high volumes of the same product, the trend is toward much smaller volumes of many varieties of similar products. In this environment, the ideal assembly machine would be capable of virtually limitless adaptability. Using robotic technology, AT&T at Merrimack Valley has undertaken a project to design such a machine for printed-wiring-board assembly. This paper describes the configuration of the resulting workstation for component insertion on the automated in-line manufacturing system.