Printed board positioning system using impact drive mechanism

There is a tendency nowadays to produce increasingly miniaturized electronic equipment which incorporate parts that have to be precisely positioned, like lenses, heads, mirrors and CCD's in scanners, printers, copiers. cameras. VCR's, optical modulos. etc. In contrast with the production process of precision parts which is currently being carried out automatically. the assemblage process is still being performed semi-automatical. Two approaches are common: nudge the parts to the correct position manually (task usually suitable for specially skilled technicians) or equip the part with a micro positioning static which is normally costly and requires too Much space. In this paper. we present a system that is able to position printed circuit boards automatically within micrometer ranue using the impact method. The proposed system utilizes six impact drive mechanisms as actuators, a CCD camera sensor. and a feedback control system incorporating adaptive control.