14 JANUARY 2014
While soldering boards today one of our Metcal SP200 solder stations stopped working with a quiet pop and some magic smoke* came from the case.
We removed the case of the power unit and found that the internal fuse had...
23 DECEMBER 2013
When using our high level photography mast we have always used a series of USB expansion cables to make up a 20m long cable to remote control the camera and view the live video feed from the camera in real-time on an Android...
05 DECEMBER 2013
After finishing the automatic pick and place project we soon found that we needed to be able to place components manually when working on prototype and very short production runs of pcb boards.
As the space in the...
25 NOVEMBER 2013
This demo app allows the user to send Gcode commands to Mach 3 to control a CNC mill, lathe or other cnc hardware.
The application was made using Visual Studio 2013 and the demo app can be downloaded here.
First create...
23 NOVEMBER 2013
The DIY pick and place machine project is now finally running and is able to place the components for our Raspberry Pi expansion boards. This project started in July 2013 when we began to order the various components, bearings,...
20 NOVEMBER 2013
On the 30 September 2013 I placed order with Ultimaker for the Ultimaker 2 3D printer and extra rolls of filament, order total 2,511.55 euros. Website said delivery from 21st October 2013
I ordered from Ultimaker as the printer...
02 NOVEMBER 2013
DIY Pick and Place V2 – Base Vision LED Array
The PCB's arrived today for the LED array to go in the base of the Pick and Place system. The six boards hold a total of 144 red leds.
We are now trying to...
27 OCTOBER 2013
The new diy pick and place machine needed a way to feed SOIC, TSOP and other tube supplied chips to be picked and placed using the machine.
After looking at a lot of commercial and diy solutions we decided to build...
24 OCTOBER 2013
The holders for the vacuum nozzles are now fitted to the pick and place machine. Our original plan was to have the motors mounted higher as in previous posts and use a magnetic holder to attach the different size nozzles...
17 OCTOBER 2013
We have started working on the vision system for the DIY Pick and Place machine. We are going to use two cameras, one fixed on the base with a led lighting array around the camera and a “flying” camera mounted...
12 OCTOBER 2013
After a busy week rebuilding the picker system with much better quality bearings and installing the home sensors to all the axises the DIY pick and place machine was finally ready to connect to the Smoothstepper Ethernet...
01 OCTOBER 2013
The feeder activator system to select the correct component feeder and then activate the feeder is based on the same system used on the semi-automatic pick and place machine we built before.
In order to save weight on...
26 SEPTEMBER 2013
Work is slowly progressing on the DIY pick and place machine with the pickers X axis having new parts machined this week and assembled and tested today.
Further photos are on my Flickr gallery at http://www.flickr.com/photos/brian-dorey/sets/72157635317638526/...
16 SEPTEMBER 2013
It has been a busy week so far designing different brackets and parts for the automatic pick and place machine. The photos below show the latest progress on the build and a video showing the picker Y axis running via a Smoothstepper...
04 SEPTEMBER 2013
After using our previous semi-automatic pick and place machine for a year we decided it was time to build a fully automatic DIY pick and place machine as we cant keep up with the demand for the Raspberry Pi expansion boards....
21 AUGUST 2013
Today I was trying to get a Netduino 2 .NET Micro Framework microcontroller board to communicate with the ADC Pi board which we build and sell for the Raspberry Pi.
Initially the boards didn't seem to communicate so...