Passive electronic components now make up 50 to 90% of all components on circuit boards and represent more than one-fij2h of the board cost. Many of these passive components have been 100% inspected by the manufacturers for electrical properties, but not for mechanical properties. Most manufacturers still measure small samples with micrometers and calipers to veri& overall dimensions, although machine vision is beginning to be used for mechanical inspection. In this paper, we investigate machine vision as a technique to enable inspection of 100% such components including properties of size, edge straightness and smoothness, and surface defects for both the bo& of the part and the terminations. In addition, machine vision is used to derive the orientation and location of the parts. This may have application to bulkfeeding of such components, a subject of current research.
Colleges and Universities across the world have developed Mechatronics courses, programs, certificates, and even degrees in order to meet the increasing demands of Mechatronics products and engineers. These Mechatronics courses, mainly focusing on undergraduate level, consist of lecture presentations, well-designed laboratory experiments, and team projects. However, how to teach Mechatronics courses at graduate level remains to be an open area for discussion. The challenge is: what subjects should be addressed, at the graduate level, to closely reflect the latest Mechatronics technologies with much broad coverage and fast growing features, while distinguished from an undergraduate-level Mechatronics course. This paper discusses the approaches that the author used when teaching a graduate level Mechatronics course (ME285 Mechatronics Systems Engineering) at San Jose State University (SJSU). The course outline, laboratory experiments, and sample course projects are presented. The goal is to provide graduate students with a challenging, timely, hands-on, minds-on, and enjoyable experience in advanced Mechatronics. A suggestion of future topics for graduate Mechatronics education is also discussed.
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