Robotics Deployment in Soldering

Project report submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of

Bachelor of Technology
in
Mechanical Mechatronics Engineering

by

Parteek Sachdeva - 14UMM016

Under Guidance of
Ashok Kumar Dargar

Department of Mechanical Mechatronics Engineering

The LNM Institute of Information Technology, Jaipur

April 2018
Copyright
c The LNMIIT 2018
All Rights Reserved
 The LNM Institute of Information Technology
Jaipur, India

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the project entitled Robotics Deployment in Soldering, submitted by Parteek
Sachdeva (14UMM016) in partial fulfillment of the requirement of degree in Bachelor of Technology
(B. Tech), is a bonafide record of work carried out by him at Securemeters Pvt Ltd Udaipur, (Rajasthan)
India, during the academic session 2017-2018 under my and Mr. Verendra Chaudhary’s supervision and
guidance and the same has not been submitted elsewhere for award of any other degree. In my opinion,
this thesis is of standard required for the award of the degree of Bachelor of Technology (B. Tech).

Date Adviser:Verendra Chaudhary

Dedicated to My Family and Friends
 Acknowledgements

Words are not sufficient to register my deepest gratitude and thanks to Mr. Verendra Chaudhary
for his support and continuous guidance in my attempt to explore Product Integration Cell its various
processes and the technology involved in production. I would also like to thank Mr. Sanjay Suman
Srivastava for his blessings and keeping his door open for me whenever I needed him. I would not have
explore the Smart metering domain till the extent I have done till now without his suggestions and ideas.
I would be failing in our duty if I not register my deep gratitude and sincere thanks to Mr. Verendra
Chaudhary and Mr. Sanjay Suman Srivastava who continuously gave me meticulous suggestions and
assignments which made my learning experience a better and deeper one.
Lastly but most important I would like to thank Professors at University and my Parents and family
members because of whom I am present in the capacity at Secure Meters to gain knowledge and imple-
ment them for future good. Above all I would like to thank almighty for the opportunity he has given to
us to work and learn, may he bless all!!

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 Abstract

A smart meter is an Internet-capable device that measures energy, water or natural gas consumption
of a building or home. Whereas traditional meters only measure total consumption, smart meters record
when and how much of a resource is consumed. Power companies are deploying smart meters to monitor
consumer usage and adjust prices according to the time of day and season.
Soldering is a process in which two or more items (usually metal) are joined together by melting
and putting a filler metal (solder) into the joint, the filler metal having a lower melting point than the
adjoining metal. Soldering differs from welding in that soldering does not involve melting the work
pieces. In brazing, the filler metal melts at a higher temperature, but the work piece metal does not melt.
In the past, nearly all solders contained lead, but environmental and health concerns have increasingly
dictated use of lead-free alloys for electronics and plumbing purposes. The outcome of this project was
to reduce manpower employed and have quality consistency in soldering by using robot and to decrease
the down-time of robot during production.

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 Contents

Chapter Page

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Area of work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Why Robotic Soldering? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.3 Problem Addressed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.4 Existing System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

2 Literature Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2 Smart Meters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.3 Secure Smart Meters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3.1 Liberty 100 family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3.1.1 Key features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.4 Concept of soldering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.4.1 Types of solder wire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.4.2 Requirement of solder joint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.5 Working of soldering robot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.6 Different Soldering Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.7 Types of soldering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.7.1 Point soldering process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

3 Proposed work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.1 Objective of the work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.1.1 Main Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.1.2 Secondary Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.2 Project assigned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.3 Functional partitioning of the project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.4 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

4 Results and Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

4.1 Different types of Soldering Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.1.1 No solder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.1.1.1 Probable causes of no solder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.1.2 Less solder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.1.2.1 Probable causes of less solder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.1.3 Excess solder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

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viii CONTENTS

4.1.3.1 Probable causes of excess solder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

4.2 Other types of problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.2.1 Solder feed angle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.2.2 Solder feed height . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.2.3 Solder void . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.2.4 Wire problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.3 Occurrences of problem caused by soldering robot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.3.1 Problem data caused by robot for all the shifts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.3.2 Problems caused by robot shift-wise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.3.3 Problems caused by robot in shift A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.3.4 Problems caused by robot in shift B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.3.5 Problems caused by robot in shift C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.4 Down-time of soldering robot during production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.4.1 Down time of robot month-wise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.4.2 Down time of robot date-wise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.4.3 Down time of robot for different problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.5 Fixture variability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.6 Base play with respect to the fixture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.7 Proper way of wire feeding process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

5 Conclusions and Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

5.1 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
5.2 Further work of Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
 Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Area of work

Smart Gas Metering in modern era has become very significant especially in the countries where the
consumption of energy is very high like any cold country where gas becomes a medium for domestic
heating as well as cooking and other purpose. To measure energy flow, Electricity Meters are deployed
in domestics as well as in Industrial sites. Securemeters is one of the leading metering companies
which have been serving as energy metering company from decades. For any type of meter there are 3
processes common for all that are as follows
1. APP: Automatic Pick and Place
2. PTH: Put Through Hole
3. PIC: Product Integration Cell
The process is same for all types of meters; first Printed circuit board is loaded by Printed circuit
board loader which is then sent to solder paste printing machine, then small components are placed
on Printed circuit board by the help of robots. After this there is AOI (Automatic inspection) machine
that checks where these components are placed properly. Then this Printed circuit board is sent to
PTH where large size components are mounted on the card, after this card is sent to PIC where final
integration of meter takes place. The main aim of this project was to reduce the variability in soldering
and decrease the down time of the robot while production for liberty 100 and liberty 120 line. Now
Robotics soldering is used for the same to reduce the field failures.

1.2 Why Robotic Soldering?

There are many advantages to use robotic soldering:
Quality consistency
Less skilled labor required
Less chances of failures
Easy to use
Reduce manpower

1
 Defect-free products
More reliable and accurate
Repeatable and reproducible
Easy to program

1.3 Problem Addressed

The Project assigned to me was to improve the efficiency of the robots deployed on liberty100/120
line and reduce the down-time of robots while production. To deploy the learning of these robots to
robot used in Saral for LCD soldering. I was able to find a alternate solution for bit used in robotic
soldering i.e. cheap and can do almost thrice the amount of joints soldered by the bit previously used.
Moreover I was able to reduce the cycle time of robot that was 56 seconds earlier to 48 seconds now. At
last I, reduced the down time to only 4 minutes i.e. the time taken to change the solder wire.

1.4 Existing System

In the past, we were using manual soldering for load switch and shunt soldering, but the problem
with it was lots of problems with the soldering quality and inconsistency in the quality compared to
robotics soldering. Our existing Product Integration Cell has two robots deployed on Liberty 100 line
and one robot on Liberty 120 line. All of the robots are used for same purpose that is 3 point load-switch
and 5 point shunt soldering as shown in the figure.

Figure 1.1 Points soldered by the robots

2
 Chapter 2

Literature Survey

2.1 Introduction
In this project I have to learn and gain good knowledge about smart meters, working of soldering
robot, concepts of soldering, types of soldering and different soldering parameters .

2.2 Smart Meters

A smart meter is an electronic device that records consumption of energy on regular basis. Meter
measures the consumption according to that it notes down the reading and calculate amount of money
to be deducted. Most of the smart meters are prepayment meters. Meter communicates information at
least daily back to the utility for monitoring and billing. Smart meters enable two-way communication
between the meter and the central system. Unlike home energy monitors, smart meters can gather data
for remote reporting. Smart meters are tempered protected if a person tries to temper meter it will
detect and communicate to utility. Smart Meters are electronic measurement devices used by utilities
to communicate information for billing customers and operating their electric systems. For over fifteen
years electronic meters, have been used effectively by utilities in delivering accurate billing data for at
least a portion of their customer base.[1]. Initially, the use of this technology was applied to commercial
and industrial customers due to the need for more sophisticated rates and more granular billing data
requirements. The use of electronic meters came into service to the largest customers of the utility and
over time gradually expanded to all customer classes. This migration was made possible by decreasing
cost of the technology and advanced billing requirements for all customer classes. The combination of
the electronic meters with two-way communications technology for information, monitor, and control
is commonly referred to as Advanced Metering infrastructure (AMI). Previous systems, which utilized
one-way communications to collect meter data were referred to as AMR (Automated Meter Reading)
Systems. AMI has developed over time, from its roots as a metering reading substitute (AMR) to today’s
two-way communication and data system. Not until the Smart Grid initiatives were established were
these meters and systems referred to as Smart Meters and Smart Meter System. Hence, the present state
of these technologies should be more appropriately referred to as an evolution, not a revolution because

3
of the development and use of Smart Meter technology and communications over the last fifteen years.
The combined technologies are also required to meet national standards for accuracy and operator-
ability essential in the industry. Although the Smart Meters are relatively new to the utility industry, they
are treated with the same due diligence and scrutiny associated with electronic meters and older electro-
mechanical counterparts. These meters have always met or exceeded national standards. Through the
leadership of utility metering professionals and metering manufacturers, the meticulous and deliberate
development of these solid state electronic measurement devices has resulted in meter products that have
advanced functionality, are stable and have tighter accuracy tolerances, and are more cost effective for
advanced features than the legacy electro-mechanical technologies. The term Smart Meter often refers
to an electricity meter, but it also may mean a device measuring natural gas or water consumption.[4]

2.3 Secure Smart Meters

Secure meters limited manufactures smart meters as a part of Great Britain Smart Metering for now
which involves a integrated three units system comprising of a Smart Electricity Meter, Gas Meter and
a In-Home Display. The Electricity and Gas meters are placed at the defined location and the In-Home
Displays shows the records of consumption in various formats as per the user demand. The meters come
in the pre-payment segment and tamper resistive.[2]

2.3.1 Liberty 100 family

Secure Meters believe that a smart meter is installed not just to provide an energy supplier with more
information to put in their customers bills or statements. It is also there to show the customer exactly
how much energy they are consuming throughout the day. This real-time information helps the customer
see where they can reduce consumption, thereby saving money and reducing carbon emissions. Secure
Meters is proud to present the Liberty 100 family of smart electricity meters. These are designed to
meet the United Kingdom Smart Metering Equipment Technical Specification (SMETS) and give cus-
tomers and energy suppliers a full range of both Smart Prepayment and Smart Credit features. Together
with an easy-to- use in- home display (Pipit 500) or other smart in-home devices, these meters give
energy suppliers the information they, need as well as allowing customers to take control of their energy
consumption.

2.3.1.1 Key features

o Smart Electricity Meter with communication hub

o Modular design the communications hub can be replaced without removing the meter.
o Can be part of a single-fuel (electricity only) or a dual-fuel (electricity + gas) installation.
Simple installation and registration process
o Operates in either Smart Credit or Smart Prepayment mode.

4
 o Operating modes can be remotely activated and the meter can be remotely reprogrammed.
o Additional switched circuit for Economy-7 and Economy-10 (Night Storage/Water Heating)installations
(Liberty 110).

2.4 Concept of soldering

Soldering is the process of joining two metals together by the use of a solder alloy to provide reliable
electrical path and mechanical strength.
Solder is used to:
1 Hold two or more conductors in electrical contact with each other.
2 Encapsulate a joint, prevent oxidation of the joint and provide minor mechanical support for the
connection.
Flux is used to:
1 Facilitate the soldering process.
2 Prevent re-oxidation.
3 Promote solder wetting(by removing metal oxide)
4 Reduce surface tension

2.4.1 Types of solder wire

They are two main types of solder wires:

1 Lead based solder(Non-RoHS):It is made of mixture of Lead and Tin.(Sn62/Pb36/Ag2 and amp;Flux
0.02)
2 Lead free solder(RoHS):.(Sn62/Pb36/Ag2 amp; Flux 0.02)

2.4.2 Requirement of solder joint

1 Providing electrically conductive Path.

2 Connecting Components, Mechanically.
3 Allowing heat dissipation.
4 Forming a tight liquid or gas seal.

2.5 Working of soldering robot

This 4-axis soldering robot consists of the soldering controller unit COMET, the solder feeder and
the iron unit RSP/RSL. You can easily set the soldering condition such as pre-heat, heating time by the
teaching pendant. After turning on the power switches of COMET and the robot, proceed to home the
machine (initializing) according to the display of the teaching pendant.
There are 3 modes to program this robot

5
 Teaching Mode:
Initialized by F4 key on the teaching pendant
Switch Run Mode:
Initialized by the start button on the robot
External Run Mode:
Initialized by the external start
There is an emergency stop switch to stop the robot if any accident has occurred during operation.
The motors power (power to the motor) will be turned off and the robot will stop running by pressing
this button. Also during soldering, the soldering will be stopped and the iron tip will go up. To release
the emergency stop:
1. Turn the depressed emergency stop switch clockwise.
2. Then initialize the robot according to the teaching pendant display.[3]

2.6 Different Soldering Parameters

Soldering station(Soldering iron, Iron belt, Cleaning pad/sponge)
Solder wire
Flux
Temperature
Time
Skill
ESD (Electrostatic Discharge)

2.7 Types of soldering

1. Point soldering
2. Slide soldering
3. Arc soldering
As my project is more concerned with point soldering, so I will be more focusing on the process of
point soldering.

2.7.1 Point soldering process

1. The point solder profile are accessed via BCD.
2. Conditions 1 to 99 can be used for any point, line and point no up solder joint profile.
3. There are 3 feed cycle(pre-feed, first feed and final feed) but only 2 are utilized.
4. The point solder profile are designed to follow a fixed sequence.
5. Process steps:
Introduce solder to joint area

6
Retracts solder if required
Introduce iron tip to joint area
Feed additional solder to create electrical and mechanical connection.
Retract solder
Reflow joint area to allow for proper wetting and flow through
Feed more solder to add flux and prevent icicles
Retract solder
Remove iron tip
6. General solder time ranges from 1 to 3.5 seconds.[1]

7
Figure 2.1 Schematic diagram of robot

8
Figure 2.2 emergency button of robot

Figure 2.3 Point soldering parameters

9
 Chapter 3

Proposed work

3.1 Objective of the work

3.1.1 Main Objective

The primary objective of the project work is to deploy robots for soldering in production which will
have quality consistency and less defects compare to manual soldering. But there were some existing
robots deployed on the production floor for soldering. In the limited time frame for academic purpose
I propose to do the analysis of problems and down time with the existing robots deployed and changes
that were implemented by me and results of the same are also shared in the next chapter.

3.1.2 Secondary Objective

The bit currently used for soldering can solder only 10000 solder joints and cost approximately INR
9000.As the product is very popular ,so the line runs in every shift and bit is very expensive with the
same. So secondary objective was to increase the life of bit or reduce the cost. I with the help of
maintenance team was able to find an alternative for the same. Now we are using a bit which can solder
30000 solder joints and cost only INR 2000.

3.2 Project assigned

In this project I am assigned some tasks to perform in stipulated time period. These tasks were shown
in below table.

1 Process Analysis and Flow chart

2 Cycle time analysis
3 Finding and Observation
4 Finding and Observation
5 Action Identification
6 Results And Conclusion

10
 The ultimate target of the whole task is to do the optimization which may or may not be done during
the course of curriculum but I will be at my toes for the same. The results obtained will definitely enable
me to further do the optimization part and will act as the pillar to the structure.

3.3 Functional partitioning of the project

1. Study the working and underlining principles of Liberty meters.
2. Study the alternative ways of increasing bit life.
3. To study the cycle time analysis of Liberty 100 line
4. To improve the efficiency of Robotics soldering.
5. To decrease the down time of robots while production.

3.4 Methodology
First few weeks, I observed the working of the robots and learnt the way to program the robot via
teaching pendant and analyzed the down-time report of robot. Then I changed the existing parameters
(that were shown in chapter 2) i.e. wire feeding speed, wire amount, wire reverse feed amount, heating
time, pre-heating time for improving the bit life and was able to reduce the temperature by 20 degree.
After this I analyzed the variability in two robots and found that there was fixture variability in both. So
I changed the fixture such that there is no variability in the robots. But there was the play between the
CCA (circuit card assembly) with respect to the base which is shown in chapter 4 . So I did a case study
to find the base which has least play with the base and found that UM03 cavity has least play among
all the cavities of base used. So, we decided to UM03 cavity to use this as dummy base for robotics
soldering. The other main reason for using dummy meter for soldering was to prevent the solder ball
formation while doing soldering, if robot misses any point. Then I took some steps to improve the
efficiency and to reduce the variability of soldering robot while production. I managed to suggest some
changes and with the help of which I was able to reduce the down time of robots also while production

11
 Chapter 4

Results and Discussion

4.1 Different types of Soldering Problems

There are basically 3 types of soldering problems faced while robotics soldering and later we will be
discussing these problems individually and see the probable causes of these problems .These problems
are as follows:
1. No solder
2. Less solder
3. Excess solder

4.1.1 No solder

No solder is same as unsolder.Unsolder can occur when solder skips over an area, leaving an uncon-
nected area or pad.There are many reasons that may leads to unsolder, I will be taking only about the
major reasons.

Figure 4.1 Unsolder

12
4.1.1.1 Probable causes of no solder

Wire feeding pipe blocked

Wire problem
Not proper contact with pad
Fume pipe blocked
Bit not cleaned

Figure 4.2 Unsolder data date-wise

13
4.1.2 Less solder
A less solder simply does not have enough solder.It may make good electrical contact, but it is hard
to verify by inspection.In any case, it is not a strong joint and may develop stress cracks and fails over
time.There are many reasons that may leads to less solder, I will be taking only about the major reasons.

Figure 4.3 Less solder

4.1.2.1 Probable causes of less solder

Not proper contact of pad and bit

Base not properly fit
Base pin problem
Variation in height of the pin
Air pipe blocked
Offset of soldering iron with respect to pad

14
 Figure 4.4 less solder data date-wise

4.1.3 Excess solder

It might be a perfectly good joint, but we can’t tell for sure.It is entirely possible that this blob of
solder wets neither the pin nor the pad and is not a reliable electrical connection.There are many reasons
that may leads to excess solder, I will be taking only about the major reasons.

15
 Figure 4.5 Excess solder

4.1.3.1 Probable causes of excess solder

Bit not cleaned properly

More contact with bit
Variation of load switch pins

Figure 4.6 excess solder data date-wise

16
4.2 Other types of problems
4.2.1 Solder feed angle
The solder feed approach angle should be between 45 and 60 degrees from horizontal. There are 4
holes on the tube holder. This will set the feed angle per the application requirement.

Figure 4.7 Solder feed angle slot

4.2.2 Solder feed height

Initial solder feed need to be positioned just under the iron tip. This prevent the solder wire from
feeding directly iron tip plating and wearing the tip prematurely. Once the initial feed is set, we can set
the second feed position the goal is the feed onto the joint area and not on the tip itself.

Figure 4.8 Solder feed height adjusting screw

17
4.2.3 Solder void
The solder may want to stay with the iron tip and not migrate to the joint, this lack of solder produce
a void. This will leads to no solder for that joint and the next joint will be excess solder.

4.2.4 Wire problem

By wire problem means that stucking of wire in wire feeding. It may happens due to residue present
on solder wire and other reason can be improper feeding of solder wire

Figure 4.9 Wire stucking problem due to improper feeding

Figure 4.10 Wire stucking problem

4.3 Occurrences of problem caused by soldering robot

Now we will analyze the occurrences of the problems caused by soldering robot (we are only focus-
ing on the 3 types soldering problems as mentioned above.This analysis will help us to know in which
day or shift there are more problems caused and by this we can also find the reason for problems also.So

18
we will first analyze the problems faced by robot day-wise then we will analyze shift-wise.Here we
taking out the problems in ppm(part per million).The ppm is calculated by the given problems i.e PPM
is calculated by number of problems divided by output multiply by 8(as 8 points are being soldered by
robot).Then the result obtained is multiply by 1000000.This is how we calculate PPM.

4.3.1 Problem data caused by robot for all the shifts

Figure 4.11 Problems faced date-wise in all shifts

19
4.3.2 Problems caused by robot shift-wise

Figure 4.12 Problems faced shift-wise

From the above image it is clear that most of the problems that are caused by soldering robot,occurs in
shift A.Now we can analyze shift-wise data with output and problems and find date which had maximum
no of problems caused by the robot and rectify the reason for same.

20
4.3.3 Problems caused by robot in shift A

Figure 4.13 Problems faced shift-wise A

From this image,we can conclude that major problems were on 12 and 13 march.On 12 march the
problem was due to offset problem, as the base put on the fixture was not proper as per process,so there
was so many problem.On 13 march the problem was due to operator variability i.e the operator that used
to sit on the robot was absent or did not sit at the robot due to some reasons.

21
4.3.4 Problems caused by robot in shift B

Figure 4.14 Problems faced shift-wise B

22
4.3.5 Problems caused by robot in shift C

Figure 4.15 Problems faced shift-wise C

From the above images, it is quite clear that problems are decreasing.The main reasons for decreasing
problem is use of UM03 dummy base cavity and new fixture developed for robotics soldering

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4.4 Down-time of soldering robot during production
What is down-time?
Down-time is the time during which a machine, is out of action or unavailable for use.Now we will
analyze the down-time firstly by month-wise and then by date-wise and after that we will see the main
reasons responsible for down-time of soldering robot during production.

4.4.1 Down time of robot month-wise

Figure 4.16 Down time of robot month-wise

From the image, it is clear that the down-time for month is quite more as compare to the other
months.Now we can analyze the down-time date wise for march month and find the reasons for the
same.

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4.4.2 Down time of robot date-wise

Figure 4.17 Down time of robot date-wise

From the image, it is clear that the down-time for 8th march and 13th march are quite more as
compare to the other dates.Now we can analyze the down-time reasons for the same.

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4.4.3 Down time of robot for different problems

Figure 4.18 Down time of robot for different problems

From the image, it is clear that major down time is caused due to soldering problems and wire
problems.Wire problems can be rectified by proper wire feeding process i.e we can provide schematic
diagram of wire feeding process on line, so that anyone who wants to change the wire can change the
same without any problem.Soldering problem can be change by seeing the variability.

4.5 Fixture variability

One reason for soldering problems was fixture variability i.e fixture was not same for both the sol-
dering robot.So my first task to make a common fixture for both the soldering robot and to reduce the
variability.

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Figure 4.19 Initial fixture

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 Figure 4.20 Present fixture

4.6 Base play with respect to the fixture

Another main reason for not proper soldering was play of base with respect to the fixture.Now what
does this play means, it simply means that there is some space left for base, so it can move and soldering
can be offset.The main challenge was to find the cavity of base for which there was minimum play with
respect to the fixture and make it dummy base for the production.So first, i collected all the cavity base
and measured the play and found out that cavity UM-03 has minimum play with respect to fixture.So it
is used as dummy base for soldering robot.Dummy means we do the soldering in this base and then this
base is replaced by a new one and again used the same for soldering purpose.

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Figure 4.21 Schematic diagram showing play between base and fixture

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 Figure 4.22 Play variation for different cavities of base used

4.7 Proper way of wire feeding process

From the image of down time for different problems, it is clear that second most reason is not proper
wire feeding process.So we need to know the correct wire feeding process.

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Figure 4.23 Correct wire feeding process

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 Chapter 5

Conclusions and Future Work

5.1 Conclusion
There were many learning from this project.Some of the learning were to know the proper way
of soldering, soldering defects,parameters affecting the soldering and bit life.Down-time for both the
robots was reduced to just 4 minutes i.e time to change the wire for April month.Other benefit was to
save INR 4000 for every bit used and more the life has also been increased to 30,000 solder joints. And
also one manpower was saved, by deploying soldering robots.

5.2 Further work of Study

The future work involves Robotic deployment in soldering for ”Saral” meters.The only difference is
that now robots deployed will do the line soldering in place of point soldering.Other challenges are to
reduce the problem of bridging between the joints as they robots will be used for LCD soldering.

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 Bibliography

[1] Z. V. Kukuljan. Apparatus and method for flexible point-to-point soldering, June 11 1996. US Patent
5,525,777.
[2] S. Meters. Smart meter systems: a metering industry perspective. An Edison Electric Institute-Association of
Edison Illuminating Companies-Utilities Telecom Council White Paper, A Joint Project of the EEI and AEIC
Meter Committees, Edison Electric Institute, 2011.
[3] A. Seiko. J-cat3 000c ometmanual.
[4] R. Van Gerwen, S. Jaarsma, and R. Wilhite. Smart metering. Leonardo-energy. org, 9, 2006.

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