Originally Posted by
Eclipze
Using an optical mouse sensor, I'm thinking of using one to correct the datum for the pickup tool... and it's position is right in the path for component pickup. Hence once a component is collected, it passes over the sensor before placement. The head can therefore correct rotation of the part on the fly, or pause to correct it with a simplier software alogorithm determine the flat edge.
The vacuum pick'n'place tool would be operated by a servo for the Z plane, using a spring loaded catilever arrangement. Therefore the head will go down to the component and then the spring would allow the servo to rotate further without placing much more force on the component.
I'd like to consider in the future having a seperate basic XY table to hold the hot air station, or adaptor a heat gun element to have a system that reflows the board. So a pre-heater underneath, and perhaps a temperature sensor on heating element to track/control a soldering temperature profile. Rather a seperate table for this to avoid over complicating the pick'n'place, and its really an additional feature that can wait.
Currently I'm only looking to place the 0805, 1206, SOT23, SOT223 components. These take the longest to place and I find the easiest to hot air solder. I may include an area to hand place components for the pickup head to use. For example, spots for all the common footprints, plus some for SO8,14,16, TSSOPs, diodes, DPAK/D2PAK etc... and have an LCD for prompting the component required. Have a tiny light sensor under each component depot would make the system quite nice to use, particularly if the tape feeders are not up and running at that stage. Ideally I'd put the dremel in the XY head to route out these component depots hahaa..
Only just starting on this project and putting ideas together...