High Speed Chip Placement

This is the Samsung SM421 surface mount chip placement platform (not to be confused with the SM421 showerhead).

The machine vacuum picks 6 tiny SMD components from cassettes in the front of the machine and moves to place them on a fixtured PCB.  The high speed precision and motion is amazing.

This video may not have the best clarity but the camera angles show a lot of the machine mechanics.

The individual axes are ballscrew driven and the flashes of red light are from a vision inspection process to check if each component has been picked correctly.  There’s a vision camera on the front of the placement head that appears to be used for PCB fiducial recognition or part inspection.

I’d like to learn more about the placement head because it’s not immediately apparent how the individual chip feeders are vertically actuated.  There are some clues that they’re belt driven but it’s still somewhat of a mystery.

Samsung SM421 Samsung SM421 Fixturing

Samsung SM421 data sheet

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