Testing Background

Southern China is the country’s core industrial cluster for ceramic UV-LED packaging. UVA (365/385/405 nm) LED chips, as the primary light source for industrial curing, are widely used in sectors such as printing, electronics manufacturing, and optical bonding, and are produced on a large scale. After production, the finished LED chips are stacked and discharged, and must be quickly sorted and loaded onto trays according to specifications and appearance; traditionally, this sorting process has relied on manual labor.

Challenges in Testing

LED chips measuring 10 × 10 mm or smaller are classified as small, irregularly shaped components; when sorted manually by visual inspection, they are difficult to distinguish when stacked. In high-volume production, manual inspection creates a significant bottleneck in efficiency, resulting in high rates of missed and false inspections. Additionally, due to the repetitive nature of the work, employee turnover is high, making recruitment difficult and management costs expensive.

Solutions

A solution combining vision-based positioning and automated sorting using a robotic arm is employed.

1. The entire system is centered around a high-performance all-in-one vision and motion control unit, equipped with a Gigabit Ethernet industrial area-scan camera, a high-definition lens, and a diffuse light source. The camera is mounted directly above the sorting station, with a field of view covering the entire vibrating feeder’s operating area;

2. A high-speed, flexible vibratory feeder is used to level the material. Through a high-precision hand-eye calibration algorithm, image coordinates are converted into spatial motion coordinates for the robotic arm, guiding the parallel-arm robotic system to perform graded picking and sorted placement according to predefined rules.

Advantages of the Solution

1. A single calibration ensures long-term stable operation, unaffected by obstructions caused by the robotic arm’s movements; it can automatically plan the optimal grasping path for stacking workpieces, requiring no manual intervention throughout the process;

2. Dozens of material process packages can be pre-stored; product changeovers require only a single-button call, with debugging completed in just a few minutes, making it ideal for flexible production of multiple varieties in small batches;

3. A single unit requires only one person for periodic material replenishment and supports 24/7 continuous operation, significantly reducing labor costs.