Head and method for orienting electrical components

Claim 1

An electrical component pick-up system for use within a component placement machine wherein various sizes of electrical components are to be picked up from one or more supply sources and placed on substrates, said system comprising a plurality of means for picking up components of different sizes, each of said pick-up means having a datum face located thereon which contacts the component to be picked up, said datum face having the same peripheral shape as the component size that is to be picked up, said datum face furthermore having peripheral face dimensions slightly larger than the corresponding peripheral dimensions of the component size to be picked up; means for operatively holding one of said plurality of pick-up means at any one time whereby the thus held pick-up means is operative to pick-up a component and thereafter place the component, said holding means including means for receiving a different pick-up means for picking up a different size of component; and at least one pair of opposing jaws, each jaw having at least one orienting face disposed to cooperate with a corresponding orienting face of the other jaw as the jaws are moved toward each other whereby each orienting face engages a corresponding peripheral edge of a particularly held pick-up means employed for picking up a particular component size so that the particular component size is oriented with respect to the datum face upon engagement of the orienting faces of said pair of jaws with the corresponding peripheral edge of the particular pick-up means.