A survey of surface mount device placement machine optimisation: Machine classification

The optimisation of a printed circuit board assembly line is mainly influenced by the constraints of the surface mount device (SMD) placement machine and the characteristics of the production environment. This paper surveys the characteristics of the various machine technologies and classifies them into five categories (dual-delivery, multi-station, turret-type, multi-head and sequential pick-and-place), based on their specifications and operational methods. Using this classification, we associate the machine technologies with heuristic methods and discuss the scheduling issues of each category of machine. We see the main contribution of this work as providing a classification for SMD placement machines and to survey the heuristics that have been used on different machines. We hope that this will guide other researchers so that they can subsequently use the classification or heuristics, or even design new heuristics that are more appropriate to the machine under consideration.     

Effect of relaxation properties on the adhesion of rubber

The adhesion to glass of rubbers with different relaxation properties but similar surface condition has been compared using the thin film peel test. At higher peeling stresses, the rubber–glass interface fractured at constant velocity and all rubbers gave the same adhesive energy values. However, at lower peel stresses, the lossy rubber appeared to adhere more strongly due to a crack-slowing phenomenon at the rubber–glass interface.     

Multi-product production planning: A goal programming approach

Cost minimization multi-product production problems with static production resource usage and internal product flow requirements have been solved by linear programming (LP) with input/output analysis. If the problem is complicated by interval resource estimates, interval linear programming (ILP) can be used. The solution of realistic problems by the above method is cumbersome. This paper suggests that linear goal programming (LGP) can be used to model a multi-product production system. LGP's unique modeling capabilities are used to solve a production planning problem with variable resource parameters. Input/output analysis is used to determine the technological coefficients for the goal constraints and is also used to derive an information sub-model that is used to reduce the number of variable resource goal constraints. Preliminary findings suggest that the LGP approach is more cost-efficient (in terms of CPU time) and in addition provides valuable information for aggregate planning.     

A-dependence of high-energy inelastic electron-nucleus scattering

Cross sections for inclusive inelastic electron scattering from H, D, Be, Al, Cu and Au have been measured at 6° for incident energies up to 19.5 GeV. Within the stated errors, the cross sections were found to be directly proportional to the sum of the constituent nucleon cross sections.     

Tests of scaling of the proton electromagnetic structure functions

Deep-inelastic structure functions W₁ and W₂ have been extracted from electron-proton scattering cross sections that were measured in recent experiments at SLAC. The structure functions display deviations from scaling in the variable ω in the kinetic range 1.5 ? ω ? 3.0 and 2 ? Q² ? 15 GeV².     

Contours of Brownian processes with several-dimensional times

Summary Two generalisations of Brownian motion to several-dimensional time are considered and the topology of their level sets is analysed. It is shown that for these maps non-trivial contours are quite rare — their union has Lebesgue measure zero. The boundedness of all contours is established for the generalisation due to Lévy. For the other, the Brownian sheet, a partial result concerning the behaviour of the zero contour near the boundary is established.Most of the results in this paper were obtained in the course of an S.R.C studentship at the University of Oxford, and appear in the ensuing D. Phil. thesis. I wish to acknowledge the encouragement of my supervisor John Kingman, and the stimulus of correspondence with J.B. Walsh and R. Pyke.