Daily And Weekly Maintenance Checklists For Pick-And-Place Machines

You run SMT. You want stable UPH, fewer placement misses, and no drama on night shift. Daily and weekly checklists sound boring, but they pay back in uptime and quality. Below is a friendly, field-tested guide you can hand to techs, plus a table you can drop into your SOP tomorrow. I’ll keep it practical, with shop-floor language—no fluff.

Quick note: in our refrigeration retail builds, good line stability also helps downstream teams installing Commercial Display Cabinet Components and Beverage Cabinet Wire Shelving.

Why “daily” and “weekly” matter in SMT preventive maintenance

Daily tasks catch dust, flux haze, and misalignment before they snowball into scrap. Weekly tasks go deeper—rails, screws, feeders—so accuracy don’t slowly drift. Together they stabilize Cpk and reduce fire-fighting. Sounds simple. It is. But it work.

• Daily = hygiene: optics clean, vacuum stable, ESD safe.
• Weekly = precision: lubrication, feeder calibration, transport tuning.
• Both = traceability: you can show auditors the log, not just tell.

Daily Maintenance Checklist for Pick-and-Place Machines

Goal: keep the vision system sharp, air system leak-free, and transport smooth so the machine picks correctly and places true.

• Optics & lighting: Wipe lens/window and diffuser. Flux fog is sneaky; it bends light and hurts centroiding. After cleaning, run a quick fiducial find—if it snaps fast, you did right.
• Nozzles: Check for clog, chips, bent tips. Do a vacuum test and a “pick-drop” dry run. If pickup fails twice, retire the nozzle; don’t argue with it.
• Conveyors & rails: Clear debris; confirm clamps hold PCB flat. A tiny crumb under the board = Z height error = placement offset.
• Vacuum/air: Verify supply pressure and vacuum level are in spec. Watch for slow decay—often a micro-leak in tubing or the filter bowl.
• Feeder lane quick check: Make sure cover tape peels smooth, no step change in tension. A jittery peel will cause micro-skips.
• ESD & environment: Check wrist straps, mats, ground points. Log temp/RH—vision hates condensation and boards warp if RH swings.
• Safety & PPE: Gloves and goggles for solvent use. Power down before reaching inside, yes even “just for a sec”.
• Record: Initials, timestamp, actions taken, parts replaced. If it’s not written, it didn’t happen.

This look simple but matter a lot.

Weekly Maintenance Checklist for Pick-and-Place Machines

Goal: protect mechanical accuracy and repeatability so your placement stays inside tolerance over long runs.

• Linear guides & ball screws: Vacuum dust, then apply the specified grease. Wipe excess; sticky chips attract more dust.
• Theta/Z modules: Check axis play and homing repeatability. Slight wobble today becomes head crash tomorrow.
• Transport system: Inspect belts, snaps, and photo sensors. Align the in/out rail height with gauge blocks.
• 3D/co-planarity & barcode modules: Clean optics and verify calibration coupons. Poor coplanarity read = false rejects at AOI.
• Feeder calibration: Run standardized peel tests and pocket index accuracy checks. Tighten what’s loose, retire what’s tired.
• Nozzle library refresh: Replace worn ceramics/plastics; re-measure critical IDs if your spec requires it.
• Spare parts & consumables: Count nozzles, filter elements, and wipers.

Feeder and Nozzle Maintenance Procedures (SMT Feeder Best Practices)

Feeder behavior drives pick stability. A sticky lane creates “ghost defects”—random, hard to reproduce. Adopt these quick rules:

• Standardize peel angle and keep a reference video in the cell.
• Tag feeders with last service date and anomaly notes. Red tag = do not load.
• Nozzle rotation: Run a Kanban box—clean, ready, worn. Don’t let “mystery nozzles” back on the line.

When your product mix includes retail refrigeration fixtures—think Commercial Display frames or Beverage cabinet wire shelving interior parts—stable SMT upstream helps your assembly takt stay predictable. Zero surprises is a super power.

ESD and Environment Control for SMT Lines

• Keep RH and temp within your machine spec; wide swings hurt fiducial capture and solder paste behavior.
• Air quality: Flux fumes deposit film on lenses and strobe covers. Use extraction; it’s cheaper than chasing vision gremlins.
• Floor discipline: No cardboard near the machine (dust), no food (oil), no “temporary” boxes blocking airflow.

Daily vs Weekly—SOP Table You Can Paste Into Your Playbook

Keep links off headings, so I’ll put them right here: our Custom Wire Shelving Manufacturing Services support ODM/ODM builds for retail, warehouse, and lab programs—nice fit if your SMT feeds into refrigeration fixtures. Also see Beverage Cabinet Wire Shelving and Commercial Display Cabinet Components for downstream assemblies.

Note: numbers for pressure or RH follow your machine manual. Don’t invent. Don’t argue with the spec.

Example Flow: From SMT to Retail Refrigeration Builds

Imagine you’re building controller boards that finally land in a beverage chiller with stainless shelves. A dirty lens on Monday causes soft vision; Tuesday AOI flags offsets; Wednesday you miss the delivery to the assembly cell; Thursday the Beverage Cabinet Wire Shelving team idles. One tiny daily miss became a week-long headache. Flip it: run the daily wipe, keep feeders smooth, and your refrigeration fixtures ship on rhythm. Simple, not easy, but absolutely doable.

Metrics to watch (no cost math, just quality)

• Pickup success rate by nozzle type (trend weekly).
• Mis-pick Pareto by feeder ID (retire the repeat offenders).
• Vision reacquire count per shift (spikes mean it’s time to clean).
• Transport jam events (should be near zero after weekly care).
• Mean time between interventions (MTBI)—longer is better.

Tie these to your SPC board so the team see cause → effect in real time.

Maintenance Records and Traceability

Auditors love clean, short forms. Operators too.

• Keep a one-page daily sheet and a one-page weekly sheet at the cell.
• Use check boxes, not essays. If a box fails, add a short remark and ticket number.
• Store scans in a shared folder. Name files LineA_Machine01_YYYY-MM-DD.pdf. So simple, everyone will actually do it.

Where QIAO fits in your value chain

“QIAO” shows up on shop floors that care about repeatability.If you build for retail refrigeration or lab cabinets, tie your SMT PM to the physical product promise: corrosion-resistant finishes, clean welds, square frames, and on-time kitting. Our Custom Wire Shelving Manufacturing Services plug into that: stable schedules on your boards → on-time Commercial Display Cabinet Components and shelves deliveries. That’s how teams win customer trust without noise. Also, if your design calls for rear mesh or other protective grids, keep SMT predictable so metalwork don’t wait.

Ready-to-print checklists (what to hand out today)

• Daily card: Optics → Nozzles → Air/Vac → Rails → ESD/Env → Safety → Sign.
• Weekly card: Linear Guides → Z/θ → Transport → Feeder Cal → 3D/Co-planarity → Spares → Sign.

P.S. for downstream teams

When your SMT is calm, your cabinet teams can focus on design tweaks, not schedule slips. For customization requests—ODM prints, odd sizes, anti-corrosion finishes—lean on our OEM & ODM services. Bring your drawings, or let us co-design brackets, rear mesh, and interior frames to match your refrigeration units components pipeline.