Printed Circuit Board Component Insertion

Abstract

Electronic assembly is becoming highly automated, yet in many production operations such as PC board assembly, workers still tediously insert many components by hand, especially the add-form factor types. Compounding this problem, costly surface-mounted components require increasingly accurate placement tolerances. Electronic assembly processes, in general, are becoming more complex and demanding. Thus, the manufacturer is caught between costly dedicated automation equipment. While thousands of dollars are being paid by PC board fabricators for automatic component insertion machines that handle well-behaved standard components, even more money goes into manual assembly with nonstandard components.