Demonstration Plant

Realisation 

This Project demonstrated the development of a flexible semi - automatic disassembling cell for printed circuit boards (PCB). For this approach electronic equipment from various sources is collected and manually dismantled and the PCBs are taken to an intelligent disassembly cell. At the disassembly cell the PCB - components are identified automatically by a vision system and classified in environmental relevant, valuable and remaining components, through various databases and information from the market. The first two groups are removed with the help of a robot and finally the disassembly process results in PCBs which are less environmental relevant and electronic components suitable for re-use. The latter allows us to run the whole process on its own finances. Special care is taken for soldered components, which are removed through laser desoldering process in order to minimise the thermal stress for the components. 

Devices of the information, communication, industrial electronics, medicine engineering, lab engineering, consumption electronics and office equipment should in particular be reprocessed here. As a consequence of the disassembling process valuable information about the disassembly of electronic equipment can be obtained. This helps to evaluate existing design criteria for disassembly and to develop new guidelines for disassembling.

Partnerships

The Eureka project Σ! 1592 is funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Fund (FFF).