Automated Segmentation of Electronic Components on Waste Printed Circuit Boards

To address this problem, a new approach for automated separation of components with a decent fraction of valuable elements from printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs) was developed at the University of Applied Sciences Aschaffenburg. The procedure is split into two parts: First, the important parts in the PCB waste have to be detected, and then they have to be extracted. In this article a practical approach for the detection using 3D data of the PCBAs will be presented. A common 3D line scanner is used to measure the height profile of the disused printed circuit boards. For inline capability, it is placed over a conveyer belt. The measured data is then grouped in areas of the same height using a customized segmentation algorithm. It is evident that these regions typically represent electrical components in case of PCBAs. Thus, this approach allows easy extraction of additional information such as shape and height for additional type classification.