Assembly of film coverlays: Development of a configurable gripper for process automation

Despite the widespread use of electronic devices and consumer products integrating flexible electronics, in industrial practice, the assembly process of film-based coverlays is still performed manually, and this, in turn, affects process accuracy in first place. Additionally, the related manual tasks can be troublesome for workers, causing stress and fatigue. As a result, such a process can represent a bottleneck in the fabrication of Flexible Printed Circuit Boards (FPCBs). In the present paper, the architecture of a gripper is proposed as the core device of a completely automated film-coverlay assembly process. The architecture of the gripper is vacuum-based and exploits the action of several independent valves, enabling the grip configuration according to the geometry of the component. The gripper operation is shown by implementing specific solutions related to the removal of the coverlay protective film and partial coverlay thermal bonding, thus providing also a detailed description of the phases concerning a feasible automated assembly process. The results of the tests concerning the evaluation of both solutions are reported and discussed in the paper. Finally, a simplified gripper version is prototyped to perform some of the tests, and it is also used to preliminarily assess the performance of the gripping strategy, with good results.