Method for air-wound coil vacuum pick-up, surface mounting, and adjusting
AssigneePhilips Electronics North America Corporation
InventorDavid H. Thibado
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An air-wound, coil-type, passive inductor includes a surface which allows the coil to be picked-up using a vacuum probe of a head of a pick-an-place machine and the surface does not interfere with adjusting the spacing between the loops of the coil for tuning the coil after the coil is attached to a circuit board. Terminal ends of the coil are placed on solder paste on interconnection pads on the circuit board, then the board is heated to reflow the solder, and then washed to remove the flux contained in the solder paste. The surface may be adapted to be removed or at least degraded by the heating, or the washing, or afterwards by a mechanical method of removal without damaging the coil.
Claims14
A method of producing circuit boards, comprising the steps of:
- providing at least one coil of loops that are multiple sequential loops;
- providing a surface connected to the coil and extending over at least a subsection of a lateral surface of the coil;
- feeding a circuit board into a pick-and-place machine;
- feeding the coil into the pick-and-place machine;
- picking-up the coil by the surface using a vacuum head of the pick-and-place machine;
- connecting the terminals of the coil to corresponding terminals of the circuit board including placing the coil on the circuit board to form electrically conductive circuits of the circuit board;
- providing a signal in the circuit board and monitoring a resulting output signal of the circuit board;
- comparing the output signal with predetermined criteria;
- and
- adjusting the position of the loops of the coil for tuning the coil, if the output signal does not meet the predetermined criteria.
A method of producing circuit boards comprising the steps of:
- providing at least one air-core coil comprising multiple sequential loops;
- providing a surface connected to the coil and extending over at least a subsection of the coil;
- picking-up the coil by the surface using a vacuum head of a pick-and-place machine;
- placing the coil on a circuit board using the vacuum head;
- electrically connecting the coil to the circuit board and
- adjusting the position of the loops of the coil to tune the coil.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.