A Guided Evolutionary Search Approach for Real-Time Stencil Printing Optimization

This study aims to identify and maintain optimal stencil printer settings in dynamic surface mount technology (SMT) assembly lines to control the solder paste volume transfer efficiency (TE) and increase the yield rates of surface mount assembly (SMA) lines. Stencil printing process (SPP) is a crucial procedure that determines the first pass yields in SMA lines. Stencil printing speed (PS) and printing pressure (PP) are two critical SPP parameters in the manufacturing process; identifying the optimal printer settings in complex fabrication environment is cost efficient but challenging. To search for the global optimal PS and PP values in real time with minimal computational efforts, a dynamic optimization SPP optimization system is proposed based on a novel guided evolutionary search (GES) strategy. The GES algorithm is flexible to adjust the feasible solution region based on real-time optimization results to maximize the probability of finding optimal solutions and minimize the computational burden. As a major extension on the classical evolutionary search, the GES minimizes the possibility to fall in the local optimal due to insufficiencies in the prediction accuracy and guarantees global optimality within the dynamically varying printing environment.