DIY SMT IMPROVISED PICK AND PLACE MACHINE (TEST) - EMC LINUX

[epoxi]

good work!



[vasileelettronica]

fantastic!!!!!



[felderup]

hmm... rotating carousel of parts, pick and place putting them on a belt feeder from the carousel, then only needing to go to one spot to get the next one... perhaps would be faster.

[sigicnc]

@felderup interesting... It's allways nice to hear ideas different than mainstream ones.

[realgrandrew]

Hi! Great project! do you plan releasing your programs sources or developing a free software to generate g-code programs for arbitrary pcbs and placement configurations? I can help with that as I am too interested in conversion of my cnc into an smt machine!

[sigicnc]

@realgrandrew Glad you like it. I didn't plan to make some user friendly programs or hardware for general usage, but there was so many feedback with ideas, questions and suggestions on this project that I am now working on next step. I will add component rotation and pin for tape advancing, on the same (slow) mill, to get more information (and headache...) about complete setup.

If you like, I can send you g-code that runs on this video, if it is of any help to you. Just let me know.

Have fun!

[stdavross666]

WOW thats great. Home engineering love it

[bigchad007]

Awesome work man!!! 

[gushhnet]

How long is your setup time for a new project?

[sigicnc]

@gushhnet 4-5 hours for board seen on video (340SMDs). This includes "dry test" and some fine (manual) tunning for QFP chip. Too much time to be efficient for any real job. But once again, this was only one-shot test, not convenient at all, and I don't plan to use that configuration again without some improvements.

[123jogger123]

Nice :-) What material are the nozzles from? Is it possible to use (flat) hollow needles without losing too much vacuum pressure (due to leaking)?

[sigicnc]

@123jogger123

Small nozzle is from brass tube, 2mm outer dia.

For ICs I used plastic tube, 4m out dia. I just used what was lying around, so that's far from perfect.

Leaking is not problem at all if there is enough flow from vacuum source.

Components tend to "move" a lot when on nozzle because of vibrations from stepper motors. I solved this issue with strong vacuum (-0.5 bar relative). Maybe making tip surface of nozzle rough would help also, need to experiment in future tests...

[123jogger123]

@sigicnc

Thank you :-) I will use tooth belts together with my steppers so I hope this will dump the vibrations. May be some rubber at the tip could stop this moving. How do you get your low pressure? I want to use a (silent) aquaristic membrane pump but don't know if it is powerful enough

[sigicnc]

@123jogger123 Aquarium pump was not strong enough in my case. Picking and holding component was working fine, but when moving it to place position it was rotating slightly on nozzle because of vibrations from steppers (large components was real pain).

I used compressor from an old refridgerator to acchive strong vacuum.

Tooth belt is fine but consider also using microstep mode on steppers to achive smooth ride.

[123jogger123]

@sigicnc

Tnx for quick answer. I never used a refrigerator compressor. I heard the compressor is full of oil, so the compressed air contains oil fog - but don't know if it is right (I want compressed air for a pin transportation of the belt as seen in some videos here) Is it easy to run such a compressor? Is it a good idea to get speed to switch from vacuum to pressured air for pushing the part instead of simply releasing? Yes, I use TB6560AHQ drivers with up to 1/16 step. Motion is smooth :-)

[sigicnc]

@123jogger123 Vacuum port on refrig. compressor is (of course) clean of oil; pressure port is a bit oily as you mentioned. I never needed pressure, just vacuum, so I can't tell about oil problem. My friend uses it for some pneumatic cylinders and it's fine (you need oil in pneumatic systems anyway).

Classic aproach for PNP vacuum is to use compressed air and vacuum ejector, and there is normaly no need to presurize nozzle for quick release of component. But I'm not shure for realy fast ones..

[sigicnc]

@future56k No, everything was written in text editor. Place locations for components were generated from EDA program. In G-code, function for pick and place was written.

For each group of components(same tape), code looks something like:

Xtape = 123

Ytape = 456

Zpick = 111

Then for placing components there was call:

call picknplace(Xplace,Yplace)

Picknplace function also increments for next tape pick coordinate.

Small programme or script is a must for more realistic use...