In many Printed Circuit Board (PCB) automatic assemblers, parts are supplied by many feeders. The mounting head usually has to move between part feeders. Such travel times often increases the cycle time of the PCB assembly operation. In this paper, in...
In many Printed Circuit Board (PCB) automatic assemblers, parts are supplied by many feeders. The mounting head usually has to move between part feeders. Such travel times often increases the cycle time of the PCB assembly operation. In this paper, in order to minimize the cycle time, we consider an automated part supplier, in which internal timing algorithm determines the exact times of parts to be retrieved to a single feeder to the mounting head. We present an optimal algorithm for such a system. We consider two cases; one for parts with all equal lengths, and the other for parts with unequal lengths.