Prototyping

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I spent the day working with a friend designing a pic and place machine so we can do our own prototypes and small run smaller assembly boards (8.5 x 12).

Still don't do enough/prototype the pcbs...not much money in that stuff...

Surface mount parts have good tolerances and are running less than half the cost of thru-hole parts...

So if you don't mind surface mount we might be up to it pretty soon.
 
IO,

Why not purchase a small flat bed CNC and modify it? They are much cheaper in US. Techno-Isel
Da Vinci would do your job and is quite cheap.

But if you are saying building your own is half of the fun, that is another matter.





 
sahib said:
IO,

Why not purchase a small flat bed CNC and modify it? They are much cheaper in US. Techno-Isel
Da Vinci would do your job and is quite cheap.

But if you are saying building your own is half of the fun, that is another matter.

Well its 1/2 the fun...and 1/10 the fund...if you get my meaning...so far our design is about $500.00 its just not real fast...
 
I wonder if there's any merit in something like a mechanical pantograph http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantograph to allow pick and place by hand but with range of motion divided down to something reasonable. A cheap video camera with magnification could provide visual feedback. I guess some of those new big bux micro-surgery rigs use robots for the translation down to fine movements.

At 60YO I struggle with even early generation SMT components, some of the newer stuff I'm looking at is scary small.  One IC I'm considering is in a 3x3 BGA. That is small.

Then we need to come up with some ROHS solder that reflows in our kitchen microwave.

and they want ice water in hell....

JR
 
Anybody using one of these?  Is it good and reliable?

AT $300, the price is attractive. Thinking of getting one.

oven001.jpg
 
JohnRoberts said:
I wonder if there's any merit in something like a mechanical pantograph http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantograph to allow pick and place by hand but with range of motion divided down to something reasonable. A cheap video camera with magnification could provide visual feedback. I guess some of those new big bux micro-surgery rigs use robots for the translation down to fine movements.


Before the flat bed CNC tables became commonly available the pantograph was the king. It was mostly used by the sign writers/engravers but other industries used to use it too. When I worked for Thorp Modelmakers (in London) in '86 for a very short period of time we used to use it for cutting/profiling. It was a pretty accurate and precision machine but was very time consuming to use. 

You can certainly motorize one but its kinematic is unnecessarily complex in terms of control. It also would not give you sufficient height in z (vertical) axis. Whereas you can obtain the same sophistication of motion from a simple xyz structure and easier to control.  Linear drives are readily available and one can actually put something together pretty quickly in 3 axis. Controllers are also very affordable. The rest is left to one's programming skills.

There are also very cheap object recognition cameras. Carnegie Mellon has one (CMUcam) which tracks an object and gives output accordingly.

Now those micro-surgery robots are alltogether a different class. You are down to microns in resolution and  repeatablity is dazzling in terms of their sophisticated kinematics.  It is not a simple xyz structure. Even the large robot arms are dazzling.  Few years ago I was working on an educational project with Kuka Roboter based in Augsburg, Germany. On their test bed these arms were swinging half a tone a second/meter I loved the groaning but smooth noise when they accelerated/descelerated.
 

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