Patent ID: 8561285

Claim:
A method of placing a workpiece relative to a disk drive, the method comprising: providing a robotically controlled pick and place station, a servo motor assembly for moving a tool within the pick and place station, a controller for controlling the servo motor assembly, and a machine vision assembly communicably coupled to the controller and the servo motor assembly, wherein the machine vision assembly and the tool are located relative each other so that a selected feature of the disk drive is within a field of view of the machine vision assembly while the tool is picking up the workpiece; moving, by the servo motor assembly, the tool from a first position for picking up the workpiece to a second position over a selected feature of the disk drive; capturing, by the machine vision assembly, an image of the selected feature of the disk drive while the servo motor assembly is moving the tool from the first position and the second position; aligning the workpiece with the selected feature using the controller and the captured image of the selected feature to control the servo motor assembly to move the tool to the second position over the selected feature; and placing the aligned workpiece onto or into the selected feature of the disk drive.