Solderbot: Automated Soldering using Robot Arm

The last few decades have seen technological advancements in the field of modeling, simulation, manufacturing, assembly and prototyping such as CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machining, milling etc. Such technological advancements have now become widely adopted to meet the needs of today?s economy. There is also a growing culture of hobbyists, makers and tinkerers finding innovative ways to lower the costs of such technology. It has enabled the invention of low-cost manufacturing and assembly machines such as 3D printers, desktop PCB (Printed Circuit Boards) millers, fabricators etc. The automated soldering of fabricated PCBs still remains a costly ordeal where the market is dominated by expensive and sophisticated vision-enabled soldering systems. Here, we propose an automated soldering technique with a low-cost robot arm that traverses planned soldering motion paths. The soldering iron heats an appropriate amount of solder/filler metal from a spool attached to a shaft that is turned by a servo. OpenCV library is used to analyze the images to position the solder iron and solder on top of the surface to be soldered. Finally, the robot arm is moved after trajectory planning in RoboDK simulation environment.