Design of Automated Needle Placement Machine with a Printed Circuit Board Composite Board Fixture

In this study, we aim to develop an automated needle placement machine using a printed circuit board (PCB) composite board fixture for electrical testing purposes.The machine consists of hardware development and software control system design.The machine is equipped with an XY platform placed on an aluminum extrusion base.Above the XY platform, two tilted testing platforms (A and B) and an industrial CCD camera are installed.The industrial camera primarily monitors and prevents human errors while observing the needle placement coordinates.The software development involves reading the original drill hole needle pattern files and converting them into editable coordinate files.These files are then imported into the Raspberry Pi operating system and processed using the Python programming language.The program reads the absolute coordinate points of the needle placement machine center and plans the path between the needle points and the absolute coordinate points.The proportional-integralderivative (PID) controller drives the X, Y, A, and B four-axis motors, and the position data from the four-axis motor encoders is read to obtain the target coordinates.After performing position fine-tuning compensation, the probe is inserted into the fixture until the needle placement is completed.The electrical testing of the next program on the fixture is then carried out.The advantage of this research lies in using the automated machine to assist human operators, ensuring accurate probe insertion into the needle fixture.This reduces the defect rate in PCB electrical testing processes and improves work efficiency, leading to automated production realization.