Fiducial marks characteristics

Popa Marian - Bogdan

Advanced electronics technologies in automotive industry
Politehnica University, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology
Bucharest, Romania
popa.marianbogdan@gmail.com


Abstract - Most placement devices are fed boards for assembly by
a rail conveyor, with the board being clamped down in the assembly
area of the machine. Each board will clamp slightly differently than
the others, and the variance which will generally be only tenths of a
millimeter is sufficient to ruin a board without proper calibration.
Fiducial marks allow automated assembly equipment to accurately
locate and place parts on boards. These devices locate the circuit
pattern by providing common measurable points. By measuring the
location of the fids relative to the board plan stored in the machine's
memory, the machine can reliably compute the degree to which parts
must be moved relative to the plan, called offset, to ensure accurate
placement.
What is a fiducial mark?

FiducialMark - A printed board artwork feature (or
features) that is created in the same process as the printed
circuit board conductive pattern and that provides a common
measurable point for component mounting with respect to a
land pattern or land patterns.
In printed circuit board (PCB) design, fiducial marks,
also known as circuit pattern recognition marks or simply
"fids," allow automated assembly equipment to accurately
locate and place parts on boards. These devices locate the
circuit pattern by providing common measurable points. They
are usually made by leaving a circular area of the board bare
from solder-stop coating (similar to clearcoat), in which a
filled copper circle is placed. This center metallic disc can be
solder-coated, gold-plated or otherwise treated, although bare
copper is most common as it is not a current-carrying contact.

Why use fiducial marks?

Most placement devices are fed boards for assembly
by a rail conveyor, with the board being clamped down in the
assembly area of the machine. Each board will clamp slightly
differently than the others, and the variance which will
generally be only tenths of a millimeter is sufficient to ruin a
board without proper calibration. Consequently, a typical PCB
will have three fids to allow placement robots to precisely
determine the board's orientation. By measuring the location
of the fids relative to the board plan stored in the machine's
memory, the machine can reliably compute the degree to
which parts must be moved relative to the plan, called offset,
to ensure accurate placement.
Using three fids enables the machine to determine
offset in both the X and Y axes, as well as to determine if the
board has rotated during clamping, allowing the machine to
rotate parts to be placed to match. Parts requiring a very high
degree of placement precision, such as integrated circuit chip
packages with many fine leads, may have subsidiary fiducial
marks near the package placement area of the board to further
fine-tune the targeting.
Conversely, low end, low-precision boards may only
have two fiducials, or use fiducials applied as part of the
screen printing process applied to most circuit boards. Some
very low-end boards may use the plated mounting screw holes
as ersatz fiducials, although this yields very low accuracy.
For prototyping and small batch production runs, the
use of a fiducial camera can greatly improve the process of
board fabrication. By automatically locating fiducial markers,
the camera automates board alignment. This helps with front
to back and multilayer applications, eliminating the need for
set pins.

Fiducial marks design

Fiducial Marks are a feature of the printed circuit
board artwork, created in the same process as the circuit
artwork. The circuit pattern and fiducial should be etched at
the same step. Fiducial Marks provide common measurable
points for all steps in the assembly process. This allows all
automated assembly equipment to accurately locate the circuit
pattern. Fiducial Marks are generally categorized in: global,
local, panel, image fiducials.
Global Fiducials: fiducial marks used to locate the
position of all features on an individual printed circuit board.
When multiple boards are processed as a panel, the global
fiducials may also be referred to as panel fiducials if used to
locate the circuits from the panel datum.


Image Fiducials - Global fiducial marks on a multiple
printed circuit board fabrication panel that are located within
the perimeter of an end-product printed circuit board.
Local Fiducial - A fiducial mark (or marks) used to
locate the position of an individual land pattern on a printed
circuit board. Three local fiducial marks should be provided
when it is necessary to provide the most accurate correction
for both translational and rotational offsets. For these
applications the three local fiducial marks should be in a
triangular pattern and should be located as far apart as possible
within the perimeter of the land pattern.
Panel Fiducials - Global fiducial marks on a multiple
printed circuit board fabrication panel that are located outside
the perimeters of the end-product printed circuit boards.



Global and/or panel fiducials should ideally be
located on a three point grid based system, with the lower left
fiducial located at the 0,0 datum point and the other two
fiducials located in the positive X and Y directions.
Global fiducials should be located on all PCB layers
that contain components to be mounted with automated
equipment. This is true even if the circuit design contains no
fine pitch (<= .020 pitch) components, as most modern
assembly equipment uses vision recognition for PCB
alignment. While other circuit objects (via-holes, etc.) can be
used, this can compromise accurate component placement.

Requirements

The use and design of fiducial marks shall be in
accordance with the following requirements.
Global Fiducials.
Offsets - A minimum of two global fiducial marks
shall be provided when it is necessary to correct for
translational (X- and Y-position) and rotational offsets (theta-
position). These global fiducial marks should be located
diagonally opposite one another and as far apart as possible on
the printed circuit board or fabrication panel.
Nonlinear Distortions - A minimum of three global
fiducial marks shall be provided when it is necessary to
correct for nonlinear distortions, such as scaling, stretch and
twist. These global fiducials should be located in a triangular
pattern and should be located as far apart as possible on the
printed circuit board or fabrication panel.
Local Fiducials.
Translational Offsets - One or more local fiducial
marks shall be provided when it is necessary to correct for
translational (X- and Y-position). These local fiducial marks
shall be located inside the perimeter of the land pattern,
preferably at the center of the land pattern.
Translational and Rotational Offsets - A minimum of
two local fiducial marks shall be provided when it is necessary
to correct for both translational (X-and Y-position) and
rotational offsets (theta-position). These local fiducial marks
should be located either diagonally opposite one another
inside the perimeter of the land pattern or one should be
located in accordance with the requirements of global fiducials
requirements and the other located on the conductive pattern
of the printed circuit board.
If space is limited, a minimum of one local fiducial
mark may be used to correct translational offsets (x and y
position). The single fiducial should be located in the center of
the land pattern.
It is good practice to keep all fiducial marks the same
size as some assembly equipment is less flexible in its ability
to recognize different size marks on the same printed circuit
board.

Fiducial marks characteristics

Some general characteristics of fiducials are:
Shape. Choosing an optimal fiducial mark for a
specific application depends on the requirement. For instance,
the crosshair-shape that is easy for a human to employ may
not be appropriate for a machine vision approach capable of
edge detection. Some fiducials contain a combination of
features, which allows the same unit to work well with
different detection methods. For example, the bow-tie shape
has two rounded edges on the outside to generate a circle, as
well as a crosshair in the middle for manual alignment.


Figure 3. Commonly used fiducials

Clearly, any visual feature can be used as a fiducial if
its location is known (or can be computed) and it can be
automatically identified. Indeed, tracking systems designed for
use in unprepared environments have been proposed that use
regions, lines, and other natural environmental features.
However, most applications for fiducial images assume a
prepared space with specific images placed in the
environment, with the assumption that the relative
transformation between a camera frame and frames indicated
by the fiducials needs to be determined. In tracking
terminology, the position and orientation (six degrees of
freedom) of the frame marked by fiducials needs to be
identified relative to the camera. This problem is also
commonly referred to as pose estimation.
Determination of position and orientation of a
physical object relative to a camera frame requires the
correspondence of at least four non-linear points. As an
example, estimating the pose of a camera relative to a physical
environment will require the identification of four 2D points
in the camera image and knowledge of their 3D coordinates in
the world coordinate system. It is possible to compute pose
from only three points. However, the result is ambiguous,
generally emitting two, and often three or four, solutions.
Hence, any ideal fiducial solution supporting 6DOF pose
estimation should always provide a minimum of four points.
Additional points can be used to compute least-square
solutions that can average out errors and increase the
estimate's accuracy. Many fiducial methods utilize a single,
typically very simple, fiducial image such as a ring or disk
with the requirement that multiple fiducials must be
simultaneously tracked. Since the location of fiducials in
camera images will always be permuted by noise and
quantization error, there is a clear advantage to tracking
additional points, so fiducials that emit multiple tracking
points seem advantageous. Also, many applications require
tracking of styli, independent marked locations, or multiple
users, where placement of a large number of fiducial images is
prohibitive.
We reach the conclusion that an ideal fiducial image
should emit at least four points. Beyond that, it is clear that the
points should approximate a square. The size of the fiducial
equates to resolution in the capture image. Four points not in
the form of a square will result in some elements of the image
presenting a lesser resolution to the camera than others,
thereby decreasing tracking accuracy in corresponding
orientations.
This does not necessarily imply that the fiducial
image itself must be square. Any image that can emit four
points would suffice. However, there are clear computational
advantages to simplicity, and a square fiducial image is the
simplest possible fiducial emitting four points. The straight
edges of a square can be used to compute best-fit lines
allowing corners to be computed with greater, potentially sub-
pixel, accuracy.

Size. Smaller and crisper fiducials provide better
alignment. Minimum diameter is determined by the optical
system and the resolution of the motion hardware. Maximum
size is determined by the field of view of the imaging system.
Fiducial marks located on the same part should not vary in
size by more than a few percentage points.


Figure 4. Typical size of fiducials

Clearance. A clear area, devoid of any other circuit
features or markings, should be maintained around the fiducial
mark. The size of the clear area should be, minimally, equal to
the radius of the fiducial mark. When possible, the amount of
clearance around the mark should equal the marks diameter.


Figure 5. Fiducial mark diameter

Edge Clearance. A fiducial mark should be located
no closer to the edge than 7.62mm (0.300"), per Surface
Mount Equipment Manufacturers Association Standard
Transport Clearance.

Material. The material will be dictated by the part,
but etched metals, organics and raw ceramics are common.
The main points are mark resolution, permanence and
contrast. The fiducial mark should be bare or covered copper.
For optimum performance, there should be a high degree of
contrast between the surface of the fiducial mark and the
adjacent printed circuit board base material.

Contrast. Most machine vision recognition systems
perform best when a consistent high contrast is present
between the fiducial mark and the base material.
Coverings. The covering may be a clear anti-
oxidation coating, nickel plating, tin plating, or a hot-air
leveled solder coating.

Plating and coating Thickness. When used, the
thickness for the bare-copper fiducial mark plating or coating
should be from 0.005 to 0.01 0 mm [0.0002 to 0.0004 inch].
The thickness of a solder coating should never exceed 0.025
mm [0.001 inch].

Flatness. The flatness of the fiducial surface should
be 15m (0.0006") or flatter.

Land Patterns. The fiducial marks should be used in
conjunction with land patterns that have been designed in
accordance with the requirements of IPC-SM-782 (Surface
Mount Land Patterns (Configurations and Design Rules).

Conclusion

If specific panel components require high processing
accuracy, it may be best to use more local fiducials. However,
this also increases cycle time, as there are more alignments per
panel.
All the fiducial marks on a PCB must be identically
constructed.
It is important to respect all the standards defined
above for a good alignment with the pick and place machine.
Fiducial marks are presented in CAD documentation. There
we must find the origin of every circuit that makes up the
panel together with orientation in space. In the gerber
documentation fiducial marks are not represented in solder
paste layers, but the coordinates of fiducials are given in pick
and place documents.

REFERENCES

http://www.cepdinc.com/presentations/PcbLayoutGuidelines_files/fr
ame.htm,PCB Layout Checklist
http://airborn.com.au/method/doc.html,PCB Design Documentation
http://www.alternatezone.com/electronics/files/PCBDesignTutorialR
evA.pdf, PCB Design Layout Rules Recommendation
http://www.latticesemi.com/lit/docs/package/tn1074.pdf, PCB
Layout Recommendations