Patent ID: 7490399

Claim:
An apparatus for mounting electronic components, fed from an electronic component feeding unit, onto a circuit board, said apparatus comprising: a base; a component holding unit having a plurality of sucking and holding members for sucking and holding the electronic components; an image pickup device attached to said base, said image pickup device including a plurality of image pickup elements equal in number to a number of said sucking and holding members, and said image pickup elements for picking up images of the electronic components when sucked and held by said sucking and holding members; a moving device for moving said component holding unit between the electronic component feeding unit and the circuit board; and a control unit operative to: (i) cause said moving device to move said component holding unit from the electronic component feeding unit to the circuit board, such that said component holding unit passes through an image pickup position; (ii) cause said image pickup device to use said image pickup elements to simultaneously pick up an image of each of the electronic components, when sucked and held by said sucking and holding members, upon passage of said component holding unit through the image pick-up position; and (iii) use the images picked up by said image pickup elements to successively recognize a sucked and held state of each of the electronic components, when sucked and held by said sucking and holding members, in an order in which the electronic components are to be placed on the circuit board, while successively setting each of the electronic components for which the sucked and held state has been recognized as able to be placed onto the circuit board.