Pick and Place Industrial Project
Written on: 02.11.2025
Overview
My industrial project in collaboration with nanoplus had my teammates and I working together on a pick-and-place project. The task at hand involved programming a pick-and-place/3-D printer machine for the identification and pick-up of specific items of millimeters in length, i.e. approx. 3 mm x 1.6 mm. The items in question were laser heat spreaders (LHS) that required precise handling so as not to damage their surface. The task would come down to the following points:
- Design CAD holds for a newly-bought camera
- Fine-tune a YOLO model for identification of the LHS
- Write a python script to send g-code for the pick-and-place action
Our team of 5 distributed our work according to our capabilities. I personally took the responsibility of working on the YOLO-based computer vision model. However, during my free time, I would keep myself updated over the progress of my teammates. In the sections that ensue, I will be covering the different aspects of the project that we tackled.
CAD
The CAD aspect involved designing a holder for the camera to be have a clear view of the LHS while being moved alongside the pick-and-place machine.
Challenge
The final decision was to have the camera be held directly next to the pick-and-place vacuum pick-up component. The challenges faced here were:
- Challenge 1
- Challenge 2
- Challenge 3
Note: We originally also designed a vacuum pick-up nozzle according to the specifications of nanoplus, but due to constraints on the smallest possible 3-D print by the company's 3-D printer at the time, we had to make do with a rougher pick-up nozzle. The principle of pick-up was all that mattered. The tests would be run on defective LHS so as not to damage precious items.