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  1. #181
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Posts
    461
    I've been working on my design lately. It's all in CAD, however getting quite detailed and quite happy with the design. Getting close to finishing the design. I've reached the stage in CNC machining skills that I'm more than confident about machining the parts to make it. I'm quite happy with creating the electronics and embedded code to run the local functions, however the PC software is the component which is the difficult part. I'm not sure how to tackle this one.

    I have been thinking of setting up a local micro to control the stepper and peripherals and run self standing, after being downloaded an instruction set. Then having a PC program to convert the pick and place data into suitable format to download to the machine. It's a lot of work and loses some flexibility, so would prefer to use a better PC program if one can be found.

  2. #182
    Join Date
    Oct 2008
    Posts
    6

    P&P

    1. We have a lot of clever ideas for the pickup head and auto sensing.
    2. Stepper motor controllers are inexpensive. Don't bother designing your own.
    Frank Will
    954-558-4369
    Frank Will 954-558-4369
    Shibumi Controls, Pembroke Pines, FL

  3. #183
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Posts
    9
    First post on CNCZONE!
    Well after reading this and many other threads I got inspired to do something as our production of SMD boards is ramping up and we have to come up with a solution.
    After my own experiences with hand assembled SMD boards and noting the quite large room for aligment errors that can be corrected by the solders surface tension during reflow plus seeing videos of examples of belt driven DIT pick & place machines I went hunting for a suitable donor machine.

    I found a nice HP 7221 pen plotter on ebay which looked the goods so I weakened and bought it. The unit arrived a couple of days ago and its a beauty!

    Not knowing much about the unit I was a wary upon opening the carton - but a quick slide of the carriage told me what i wanted to know - STEPPER MOTORS! yay!

    Opening the beast up (19kg!) revealed the most beautiful of constuctions - REAL bearings on REAL slides made of REAL metal! and two HUGE steppers driving a magnificent cable driven positioning system - a win!! Native "full step" resolution is about 0.25mm (or probably more correctly based on its age 0.254mm!). So I am hoping based on this and 200 step motors I will have about 50mm of linear travel per revolution on both axis which *should* give me fairly rapid movement. Both steppers have easinly removable damping flywheels on them that may need to be removed to improve direction change speed.

    Gutting out the lower case of all the old electronics and dodgy looking PSU (which as a matter of interest has a high voltage section for electrostatic paper holding!) reveals a CAVERNOUS area to mount up to date electonics and a nice new SMPS/cooling fans etc etc!

    Further investigation reveals the deck is a solid 6mm ally plate with a thin PCB gluded to the top for the electostatic paper holder system. Removing the PCB was fun - many hours soaking in acetone FINALLY softened the glue enough to get the board off and then a clean up with glue removed and prepsol finished the job. The deck will get drilled and tapped in a nice grid pattern in prep for a hold-down system.

    The unit also has a nifty pen swap system which i plan to try and utilise to swap between a pick and place head and solder paste dispensing head.

    The solenoid/spring driven pen lift system has plenty of adjustment and also an air dampener plus lift hieght will be enought for passives like resistors,small caps, diodes/Transistors and SOIC IC's. Careful board design and an interesting feeder concept seen elsewhere will enable many components to be place without rotation.

    Well thats about all I have to report on this little project so far - step one will be to retro fit the new PSU and stepper controller boards and then take some measurements to see what linear speeds we can acheive as well as repeatable positioning.

    Cheers for now!

    Stocky

  4. #184
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Posts
    9
    Quote Originally Posted by ppBuilder View Post
    Well...
    It does "pick & place", but no rotation, no squaring, no toolchanger, no teach-in camera. Fun to watch but I doubt it is a very useful machine.
    If fact for a small producer like me the time it could save once setup would be magical! This machine is where my main motivation for my HP X-Y plotter project is coming from!

  5. #185
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Posts
    9
    Had a bit more of a play with the pen lift mechanism today. Basically the pen is lifted by the tension of the spring on the solenoid arm - might have to increase its strenght a touch if my "pen" is heavier than the standard one.

    The pen "drop" is also controlled by a small spring and an adjustabel air damper - this means the head will self adjust to the thickness of components as the head only falls under gravity and it not forced down - this should work nicely.

    The pens swap mechanisim will need a little "dremel" adjust for clearance slots for the vac/dispense lines but that wont be hard. I can have 4 pens - say one for solder dispense and three diffrent vac heads for different component sizes.

    Just started to look at MACH3 and trying to work out how to control extra output relays and so on while i wait for my stepper drivers to arrive :-)

  6. #186
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Posts
    9
    silly forum - wrote a page of info and it lost it when i clicked "post"

  7. #187
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Posts
    9
    Now its posted it - go figure!

  8. #188
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Posts
    46
    Quote Originally Posted by stocky6409 View Post
    First post on CNCZONE!
    ... Careful board design and an interesting feeder concept seen elsewhere will enable many components to be place without rotation...
    This PnP machine will be a toy.
    ...Just started to look at MACH3
    I think, special soft will be more suitable. Can you write control soft for this machine?

  9. #189
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Posts
    9
    Each to their own - your "toy" will be my "tool" - simple needs.

    Yes - I am capable of writing my own control software if required - again my needs are simple.

    I do not need the the flexibility of a commercial machine nor can i afford one - even second hand.

    Stocky

  10. #190
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Posts
    46
    Can you send some photos of your machine?

  11. #191
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Posts
    9
    As per my posts its just in its intial stages - once I get the new drivers installed I'll post some vids of it movement and setup. :-)

  12. #192
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Posts
    23
    Hi Nisma
    I am new to this group. I build CNC machines before but know nothing about P/P machines. I build a P/P machine for my own use not really knowing how everything works. I made my own mechanical feeder that I think will work very well. I didn’t know they used cameras on P/P machines so I did not make provisions to fit any. What I need is software for my machine. Nisma do you have software that’s complete and will I have to use cameras?
    Regards
    Marcel

  13. #193
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Posts
    1
    As far as using a camera system, it would help for alignment purposes. Even if the system was only setup with a cross hair for "manual" alignment. If you use a camera, keep in mind that your software would need to be setup for an offset between camera and the center of placement tool. In this instance you place something then jog the camera with your cross hairs to the center of what was placed to create a quick camera to tool offset. This offset would need to happen each time the machine is powered down and re-started...depending on the equipment maybe each time you change your board.

    That is something to keep in mind with using a camera system. I can offer other pieces of advice given worked and still work with many SMT placement machines, stencil printers, reflow ovens, selective waves, adhesive dispensing etc..

  14. #194
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Posts
    119

    Homemade Pick and Place

    Just found this thread and wanted to give everybody watching it a heads up. There is another thread discussing CNC/PnP conversion and I posted some videos of my machine there a couple days ago. Here's the link.

  15. #195
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Posts
    461
    For those interested, I've started building my pick and place machine.

    I'm posting picture updates in this thread
    http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97551
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails eclipze_pick_n_place_01.jpg  

  16. #196
    Join Date
    Sep 2019
    Posts
    1
    Hi!

    While searching for pick and place machines on google, I just found this thread. First of all, I want to thanks everybody for providing a lot of useful information here.

    I'm just tired of outsourcing, so I decided to purchase a dedicated machine, but I don't have a fortune to spend on it.

    Since nobody mentioned Neoden in this thread, I'll mention them https://neodenusa.com/smt-pick-and-place. Their prices are a little bit lower compared with others. Did anyone had any experience with them so far? Any information would be more than welcome.

    Thank you all!

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