Mystery P&P part found, need help identifying purpose. (SOLVED)

[Kjelt]

Today to my surprise I found another interesting part of the Assembleon pick and place machine from the iron scrapyard.
The left part I identified immediately as a camera since it had a pcb probably with leds on it and a lens and the obvious giveaway a firewire connector.

There is also another larger compartment to the right next to it that I have no clue what it exactly is.
Three 20 pins micro header connectors are leaving this unit.

On the botton there is another CyberOptics laserunit that I also found on the pick and place head topic:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/tear-down-of-an-assembleonphilips-pp-head/msg1288054/#msg1288054
This one is different but probably the same kind of operation.

Then I opened this mystery compartment and to my surprise there is some real fancy mechanical hardware inside:

- A tube with engravings Namiki BL18-4505   IOF    2423
  on the tube there is a pneumatic tube attached, from the tube three wires are leaving.
- The tube slides over a fancy linear guideway a spring holds it back
- to the right it is mechanically connected to a device with two coils in some metal encasing

There is some sort of processing board: ICs that can be identified: Atmel 89C51 processor , three pieces of FM25640-6 64Kb FRAM Serial Memory

Does anyone have any idea what this is and/or does ?
Googling on Namiki I get fountain pens http://www.ad-na.com/en

So my best guess is a smd glue dispenser but why would it be next to the camera.
Putting pressure on the nipple nothing happens, the air blows right out on the bottom.

any help suggestions would be appreciated,
thanks.

[Kjelt]

more pictures

[Kjelt]

Reading some patents and now suspecting it to be a dc brushless motor with linear actuator,
I guess it could be a drill / mill of some sort.
The linear railway would block all side forces, the pressure could eject a broken bit.

Is that common to have a pcb drill mill on a P&P machine, I never heard of it. I could imagine it would come in handy to cut some traces for configuration 

[mikeselectricstuff]

Can't think why you'd have a drill/mill of any sort. 
Hard to picture how it moves from the pics.
How many axes of movement does it have, and in what orientation relative to the PCB?
Could it be something that cuts a mark/number into the PCB?
Or for giving a hard push to something that has locking pins?
Or a tool changer?

[Kjelt]

Hard to picture how it moves from the pics.
How many axes of movement does it have, and in what orientation relative to the PCB?

The cylinder/motor moves just like a P&P head , Z axis only, orientation towards the pcb.
The head with a 1,27mm opening can rotate around it axis and it feels like a motor with ballbearings.

Could it be something that cuts a mark/number into the PCB?

That could well be this is pre-laser engraving age made in the 90's.

Or for giving a hard push to something that has locking pins?

Too delicate IMO this looks and feels like precision instrument making.
The extra piston on the P&P head (see other topic) could well have that function.

Or a tool changer?

What tools are you thinking of?
This is part of an Assembleon FCM(ii) machine, 16 heads parallel movement on Y axis, 4 feeders per head and the pcb's move horizontally over the X axis.  i read the operator manual and nozzle exchange is done manual by the operator.

[Kjelt]

So the puzzle is finally solved due to a friend that put in all his weight (literally) to loosen three screws that were in the camera housing.
He broke the first 2,5mm hex key since the force needed was really unbelievable, probably some heavy locktite usage 
Anyway the second hex key was stronger and the three screws finally gave in.
Removing the camera housing, the answer popped in clear sight from a sticker:
A SMAC company product called LARA1-31.5 (and i thought that SMAC was only some kind of meat).

Looking at their website the LAR is a Linear Rotary Actuator with high precision (41k rotary encoder resolution)
http://www.smac-mca.com/lar-series-p-59.html
Their main selling point is soft-landing a form of sensing the head is close to the component and adjusting the down force accordingly so it lands softly.

Prices are staggering: 3k$ a piece 

So why is this used, well AFAICT it is an ultra precision pick and place head for delicate components with extreme precision placement,
so probably since it is also adjacent to the camera this is the head that picks (large) ic's from the component tray (my best guess).

Here is a demo:


Now that I know what it is I kind of wished I had the connector pin layout of this LAR, probably mission impossible to get it to work, what do you think ?