Y AXIS BEAM POSITIONING SYSTEM FOR A PCB DRILLING MACHINE

摘要

A positioning system for a gantry adapted to move in the horizontal, X-Y plane that utilizes up to 80% less energy to operate than commercial machines, while at the same time decreasing the position settling times by 50%, and achieving this with an “in position window” of 2-3 microns, (a settling window) beating the current industry in position window of 7-12 microns. It accomplishes this through a novel synergistic overall design that utilizes a much lighter and much stiffer moving mass resulting in the moving components having an increased natural frequency. With this system on any style of PCB drilling machine, the drill bit life is extended in two ways: they do not dull as fast and they do not break as often. This is because the small in position window ensures that as the drill bits plunge into the substrate to be drilled (a PCB board) the drill unit sees very little motion in the horizontal plane thus keeping the bits from wandering upon hole initiation and from experiencing excessive horizontal plane sheer forces (side loads) when starting their plunge into the substrate.

主权项

1. A positioning system for use with a horizontally moving gantry adapted for integration with a PCB drilling machine, comprising:
a liner beam capable of movement in the X axis or the Y axis of the X-Y plane, said beam having two ends and a center; at least three parallel guiding rails, two of which are located beneath an end of said linear beam and one of which is located beneath said center of said linear beam; at least three linear guides affixed between said parallel guiding rails and said linear beam, at least two of said linear guides located at said beam ends and at least one of said linear guides located at said beam center; at least two linear drive systems, each affixed to one end of said linear beam; at least two high resolution position feedback sensor units capable of providing a signal corresponding to a position of said ends of said beam to a software controller; at least one software controller; and at least one computer system; wherein said software controller receives position signals from said position feedback sensor units and desired location data from said computer system and algorithmically generates and provides signals to each of said linear drive systems to move said beam in the X axis or the Y axis of the X-Y plane.