yes pick and place machines can be a pain ....
i have the feeder idea just about sorted out , very similar to the way you describe Jon , along with the pickup head which is rotateable , my thoughts are to use the camera to align the parts rather than using fingers , using a pattern matching process against a database of footprint pictures , locate the parts using the pattern matching algorythm , this then uses the pattern match to locate the centre of the part , then lifting by suction which is rotatable by stepper , the camera pattern matches the location pads and rotates the part before mounting . i'm lighting the camera area by Infra red led's and have the camera tuned to match this , and filtering the colours out , so you end up with a white image of the pads , later on if this all works my ultimate goal is to use two cameras and a stereo image to give 3d .
the area that i have not worked out yet is to how to rotate the part, i have the pattern matching somewhere near , with an angle measurement along with the pick up centre point in x y
but a long way to go , i.e matching the x & y and rotating .
Forum 
