Annual Reviews

in Control
PERGAMON Annual Reviewsin Control 23 (1999) 165-170

INTELLIGENT DISASSEMBLY OF ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT

Bernd Kopaeek ~) and Peter Kopaeek.2)

1) Austrian Society for Systems Engineering and Automation

Adlergasse 3/1, A-2700 Wiener Neustadt, Austria
Tel.: +43/2622 27367, FAX: +43/2622 27367 - 22
E-mail: bernd, kopacek@ihrtnt, ihrt. tuwien.ac, at

2) Institute for Handling Devices and Robotics

Vienna University of Technology
Floragasse 7A, A-1040 Vienna, Austria
Tel.: +43-1-5041835, FAX: +43-1-5041835-9
E-mail: kopacek@ihrt l. ihrt. tuwien, ac. at

Abstract: Fully or semi-automatized disassembly will gain importance in the nearest

future especially for electr(on)ic waste. Concerning the recycling logistic - a new
concept for this purpose based on ,,disassembly families" as well as a flexible, modular,
intelligent disassembly cell is presented in this paper.

Keywords: Recycling, Life-Cycle Engineering, Disassembly, Disassembly Cell

1.INTRODUCTION computers, printers, telephones, household-machines

Manufacturers of domestic appliances, electro-
mechanical and electronic products are facing one of
their most serious challenges today: how to apply an
integrated approach to business and product
development to create environmentally compatible
products, i.e. replace the traditional flow of products
from manufacturer to landfill with a recycle and
recover approach, because ex post emissions
treatment and waste taxes are not sufficient solutions.
A drastic change of scale is urgent. This can be
obtained only by designing products more
compatible with the environment.
Furthermore, the world is facing an ever growing
stream of electronics waste as a result both of the
rapidly increasing number of new applications for
electronics and of the accelerating pace of
technological development and ever shorter service
life.
The tremendous increasing amount of electro-
mechanical and eleetr(on)ic products, such as
1367-5788/99/$20 © 1999Publishedby ElsevierScienceLtd on behalfof the InternationalFederationof AutomaticControl.All rightsreserved.
PII: S 1367-5788(99)00018-8
and others, to be recycled (and also to be
disassembled), makes it necessary to partially
automate this disassembly process to increase the
efficiency. The need for such semi-automated
solutions can be estimated from the German
electrical and electronic equipment market, where
more than 2 million tons per year of electronic scrap
are expected for the next decade.
Within the EU the electronic waste has already
reached staggering 10-12 million tons a year. In some
branches there is a tremendous growth, like the
German PC market, where 2,8 million PCs have been
sold in 1994- worldwide the sale of PCs 1994
increased to 45,2 million (+25.2%).
According to a recent study for the US market and
estimated that if the current German pace of
discarding 3-4 million computers per year continues,
disposal costs would alone reach a staggering 200-
300 million ECU per year.
Material and design selections are influenced by
166 B. Kopacek, P. Kopacek /Annual Reviews in Control 23 (1999) 165-170
many factors such as engineering requirements.
manufacturability, performance, environmental
effects, costs and time. Such considerations are not
mutually exclusive, but all decisions must be
recognized as a compromise between different levels
of reliability, performance maintainability and
environmental friendliness in order to achieve
minimum life time expenditures. Every product has
environmental impacts which are determined by their
design, adverse environmental impacts will be
minimized or designed out. Decisions made at the
design stage affect a product's impact on the
production and recycling processes, the threats to
human health and the environment and the
characteristics of waste streams.
Because of the complexity of electronic scrap
recycling, various topics are addressed, like:
• collection logistics,
• disassembly,
• reuse of usable parts,
• recovery of precious and rare materials,
• recycling of non-hazardous materials and
• disposal of hazardous and toxic substances.
2. DISASSEMBLY (STATE OF THE ART)
Until now a very high standard in the field of
automation and robotics have been reached, but
focused only on assembly. Few parts of electronic
scrap are recycled after disassembling, however, the
degree of automation is still very small - only some
pilot or demonslration projects are realized mainly in
research institutes. For the expected mass of products
which will come back to recycling and disassembling
companies in the future, the existing manual
disassembly is totally insufficient. Especially parts of
high quality products, i.e. those which contain
precious metals, are disassembled in order to reuse
some components. For a lot of products, especially
those used in private households, the effort of manual
work would not be worth it. Today most household
products are shredded without any disassembly. In
this case a separation of toxic components is not
economically feasible and therefore not done at all.
Because of the tremendous increasing amount of
electronic products to be recycled ( and also to be
disassembled), makes it necessary to (partially)
automate this separation process to increase the
effort.
However also for the disassembly processes high
flexibility, high accuracy, vision sensors and low-
cost will be necessary. The automation potential will
be of the most important productivity factors for this
new production process and becomes a new
challenge for engineering.
Especially for electric and electronic products, there
are several end of life options existing, namely:
• upgrade,
• reuse, recondition,
• re-manufacture,
• resale,
• recycling of materials and
• disposal.
Almost all of them require some form of dis-
assembly. As already pointed out, the tremendous
amount of electronic scrap deduce a need for
automated solutions. Because of the particular
characteristic and requirements of disassembling
tasks, fully automated disassembling needs structures
and methods for a semi-automated disassembling
with both, use of manual and automated (e.g.
robotized) workplaces to meet the requirements of a
new life cycle strategy.
At present, recycling and disassembling of PCs gains
more and more importance. Until now, there are
some pilots for automated disassembling of
keyboards (e.g. Austrian Research Centre in
Seibersdorf), monitors (e.g. Siemens, Germany) and
printed circuit board (University Braunschweig) - but
for there is no (semi-) automated solution for the PC
itself.
All existing pilot or laboratory systems for automated
disassembling do not fulfil the demands for the
future. Compared to the planned disassembly system,
already existing concepts are very inflexible and only
developed for a special task or product - e.g. few
types of telephones, MiniDiscs or IBM Keyboards. If
there are only minor changes to the product, these
very inflexible systems must be adapted with very
high costs. Hence for the industrial user such a
system is only economical for large quantities of the
same product. A further problem arises (in most
cases) when used products are going to be
disassembled. The characteristics (geometric form,
dimensions,...) of these can differ enormously and a
,,non intelligent system" is not able to take them apart
efficiently.
3. DISASSEMBLY CELLS
As pointed out earlier ,,stilT' automatized
disassembly in single purpose cells - only for one
product (e.g. one type of PC's) - cannot be
economically operated today. The number of devices
or parts to be collected and concentrated on the place
of the disassembly cell is usually to low for a two
shift working of the cell. For example in the case of
computer-keyboards of a distinct type, all keyboards
disposed all over Europe per year could be
disassembled in three month by this fully
automatized cell.
Therefore forming of relevant product groups
 B. Kopacek, P. Kopacek / Annual Reviews in Control 23 (1999) 165-170
~mOing
Fig. 1. Parts of a disassembly cell.
(disassembly families) will be the key factor for the
whole system. Here the optimum for the
characteristics of disassembly, design and recycling
must be found. These so called ,,disassembly
families" are groups of similar or different products
that require nearly the same disassembly operations -
carried out with the same disassembly tools.
3.1 A modular system for intelligent, flexible
disassembly cells
The design of a disassembly cell is an important topic
and is carried out today by concurrent engineering
methods. Fig. 1 shows all different parts of a modular,
flexible disassembly cell. According to the figure the
main modules of such a cell are:
--. Industrial robots or handling devices with special
features like high accuracy, path- and force
control.
Special gripping devices for a broad spectrum of
parts with different geometries and dimensions
--, Disassembly tools especially developed for robots
Feeding systems for the products to be
disassembled
Transport systems - similar as for assembly cells
Fixture systems for parts with different
geometries and dimensions
Manual disassembly stations
Intelligent control units able to process
information from extended sensors
(,,Low Cost'') Vision systems for part recognition
Various sensors for force and moment limitations,
position, distance, etc.
167
Storage systems for tools and parts
These modules can be chosen and combined
according to the necessities of a cell for a
distinct disassembly family'. The designing of
such a cell can be divided in:
Analyzing: Which parts are the most
suitable ones for recycling?
--, Determination of the operations for
disassembly of the selected components.
Decision: manually or automatically?
--, Selection of the tools starting with the
,,easiest" operations.
Contrary to the assembly process for disassembly it's
very important having no operations with single
parts. Therefore the number of single operations is
lower and as a consequence the costs of the
equipment too.
For the development of a modular, flexible
disassembly cell some of the modules are available
from assembly cells, but research on the following
subjects is necessary:
• Conception of sensor guided robots for
disassembly.
• Evaluation of necessary tools and grippers
which fit to the required separation
techniques.
• Conception of extremely flexible and modular
gripping devices for disassembly.
• Evaluation of possible implementation of
methods of artificial intelligence in the cell
control with a minimum of sottware costs and
computing time.
• Evaluation of best suiting vision system and
product groups, considering present product
categories and discernible future design
trends.
• Evaluation of interfaces for the integration of
a vision system to semi-automated cells,
adding visual identification and physical
measurement methods for the activation of the
robot control:
- pre-selection of parts,
- sample to measurement device, or vice
versa,
- sample or surface preparation.
• Cost estimation of adapting a vision system to
the indentified needs of the product and the
necessary robot manipulation considering the
industrial environment.
168 B. Kopacek, P. Kopacek /Annual Reviews in Control 23 (1999) 165-170
3.2 Disassembly logistics
Disassembling can only be done economically when
the interfaces are satisfactory. That means there must
be enough products at the disassembly factory and
the separating technique must be able do realize its
task. Hence the results of this task will help to build
the system at the right place and to use appropriate
separation techniques
For the different products in the product groups the
applicable separation technologies must be identified.
Further on it must be def'med if the disassembling
operations can be done in a destructive or non-
destructive way. For each type of product a solution
will be designed for the components that are not
entering the automated system. Optimum problems
concerning the transport of the scrap from collection
to the recycling places - defined as ,,disassembly
logistics".
4. COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN OF MODULAR
DISASSEMBLY CELLS
In 1992, the Institute for Handling Devices and
Robotics started to develop a planning tool for
knowledge-based, semi-automated planning of
robotized assembly cells - called ROBPLAN
(Kopacek and Kronreif, 1996). The kernel of this
planning system consists of four independent,
relational databases: Symbol Database, Product
Database, Component Database, and Planning
Database. Using this database system, ROBPLAN
allows a semi-automatic selection of the necessary
assembly cell components by manual selection of
Component Database
creation of the
product database
~mbly ~
and
I selection of the
assembly llme
Planning Database and
price calcukl~on
evalualion
of the results
Fig. 2. Structure of the planning system ROBPLAN
possible assembly operations (selected from a list of
predefmed assembly icons). The semiautomatic
linkage of the assembly icons with available tools,
grippers, changing systems, etc. and an automatic
refinement of the assembly operations generate the
best value for the required cyclic time of the
assembly cell. After the planning process has ended,
the planning software produces a list of all required
parts, the calculated cyclic time, the required costs
and the maximal delivery time (Fig. 2).
As there are many similarities to the planning of
assembly systems, the application area of ROBPLAN
will be extended now to planning of robotized
disassembly cells.
4.1 Required adaptations of the databases:
Product Database: To calculate the optimal dis-
assembly depth and the cost/benefit ratio of the entire
disassembling process, this database should include
the values of the disassembled parts (concerning the
different recycling processes - material recycling,
recovering, etc.). For the complete description of the
product, the database has to contain a detailed
description of the part connections (how to solve
them, possible tools for solving the connections).
One key aspect for the ,disassembly process is to
know the ,,constitution" (age, damage, etc.) of the
product and expected complications caused by this
conditions.
Symbol Database: The pre-def'med assembly icons
from the Symbol Database have to be extended with
representative disassembly steps.
Product Database
Symbol Database
 B. Kopacek, P. Kopacek/Annual Reviews in Control 23 (1999) 165-170
Component Database: The description of available
cell components has to be expanded with tools and
systems necessary for disassembling. Especially, a
detailed description of available sensor systems and
their characteristic data has to be included to the
Component D ~ b e s e .
Planning Database: Equivalent to the planning
process of an assembly cell, the results of the design
phase are written into the Planning Database. As an
extension for the disassembling process, the proceeds
of the disassembling can be calculated (and
compared to the cost of the cell) and included to this
database in order to proof the efficiency of the
planned cell.
4.2 Required adaptations of the planning process
Beside some adaptations of the selection and input
masks (causedby the extension of the databases), the
planning process of the assembly process basically
can be used without significant changes. For using
the planning system ROBPLAN and for evaluating
the results proposed by the system, the knowledge
about optimal disassembling depth, strategies for
disassembling etc. is indispensable.
5. DISASSEMBLING OF MINIDISCS - AN
APPLICATION EXAMPLE
Sony D A I ~ Austria is one of the largest producers
of optical storage units - MiniDiscs as their main
product. A s it is typical for every industrial
production, some of the produced MiniDiscs do not
satisfy the desired high quality standard. Due to the
rising waste disposal costs and the high costs of
human work, an automatic recycling of MiniDiscs
was the key aspect of this research project.
Fig. 3. MiniDiscs on the transportation system
169
5.1 The MiniDisc
There are two different types of MiniDiscs in
production: a playback-only and a recordable one.
An assembled playback-only MiniDisc consists of
the following parts: Upper Cartridge, Label, Disk,
Clamping Plate, Shutter Lock, Shutter, and Lower
Cartridge. The rec~rdable one has a Shutter on both
sides.
The Clamping plate is made of a special type of
magnetic steel - the Label is made of paper. The
Upper and Lower Cartridge as well as the Disc
consist of Polycarbonat, the Shutter Lock and the
Shutter of Ployoxymethylen.
5.2 The disassembly cell
The disassembly cell consists of two main
components: a feeding system and the disassembly
system itself. Furthermore there is the cell control
unit, a transportation unit (see Fig. 3) between the
two components, and sensors to control the
operation.
The feeding system takes the MiniDiscs from a
container. A recognition or inspection of the
particular MiniDisc is not necessary, because every
disk is the same and there is no wear, pollution or
damage. The transportation system is equipped with
sensors to orientate and align the MiniDiscs.
Afterwards the MiniDisc is taken to the disassembly
system. There, it will be fixed and cracked with
wedges from the side. Doing so, the Upper and the
Lower Cartridge are separated. A vacuum gripper
picks the Upper Cartridge (Fig. 4) and puts it into a
special container. An optical sensor controls that the
170 B. Kopacek, P. Kopacek /Annual Reviews in Control 23 (1999) 165-170
Fig.4. Removing the Upper Cartridge
Upper Cartridge reaches its destination. At the next
stations of the system the Clamping Plate, the Shutter
Lock, and finally the Shutter are removed with
special tools. The proper course of these operations
are also controlled by sensors. Every part is given
into a specific container, where they are stored for
further processes. Every 4 seconds one MiniDisc is
disassembled by this system.
6. CONCLUSIONS
Disassembly automation especially for electr(on)ic
devices is absolutely necessary worldwide in the
nearest future because of the dramatically increasing
amount of electr(on)ic scrap.
Today only some pilot projects in form of fully
automated single purpose solutions - and only for
one distinct type of one product - are realized. Main
problem is the collection and transportation of a
sufficient amount of these products to one place in
one area.
Therefore it is necessary to disassemble more than
one product in an automated or semi-automated cell.
For this purpose products with similar disassembly
operations are collected in ,,disassembly families" -
families which are disassembled in modular cells,
developed by means of computer aided planning
systems.
This offers - especially for SME's - two possibilities:
• They can be involved in the production of
modules for such cells or in their design and
development.
They can use such cells for an efficient
disassembly of electr(on)ic parts.
Such modular, intelligent, flexible disassembly cells
ensure high flexibility necessary for the factory of the
future. The planning and development process of
such cells is a time-consuming process today.
Therefore a computer aided planning system as an
efficient tool for reducing the planning time -
DEROBPLAN - is under development. The system
supports the planner and shortens the planning time.
REFERENCES
Gschwendtner G., P. Kopacek (1995). Design for
Disassembly. In: Preprints of the 4th Intern.
Workshop Robotics in Alpe-Adria Region,
RAA "95, PSrtschach, Vol.l, p. 79-82.
Gschwendtner G., A. Frotsclmig, P. Kopacek (1995).
Concurrent Engineering for Disassembling. In:
Proceedings of the 8th Symposium on Information
Control Problems in Manufacturing, Beijing,
p.79-84.
Kopacek P., G. Kronreif (1996). Robplan: Semiauto-
matic planning of robotized assembly cells. In:
Proceedings of the 27th International ~ymposium
on Industrial Robots, Milan, p. 385-390.