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Unboxing Our New Desktop Pick and Place Machine

sparkfun.com

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Re: Unboxing Our New Desktop Pick and Place Machine

#61

Post by donkeyd »

lgbr wrote: post #38
jwr wrote: post #32

Buying your own pick&place is quite similar to buying an FDM 3D printer. It doesn't make any sense at low scale, unless you want to spend endless time tinkering with the machine proper. Pick&place, as well as 3D printing, begins to make sense at industrial scale, with huge expensive machines. Sparkfun might be a borderline case, but I suspect even they won't use these cheap pnp machines in the longer term. If you are…

> It doesn't make any sense at low scale, unless you want to spend endless time tinkering with the machine proper. For 3D printing this is becoming less true every day. 3D Printers are now extremely cheap, where sub-$300 printers make sense at low scale usage. A typical print from an outsourced printer like Shapeways might cost you about $20, and once you factor in the cost of the material when you print yourself, it…

Exacly! I have an FDM printer (~$300) and it's great to have it at home. When I design something, I can do a partial print at low quality to check for clearances within an hour. Then I can modify the design and print an optimized version. It makes for a really short feedback loop and if I mess something up, I don't need to pay the base fee again. And I'm a true hobbyist, I don't do anything hardware or CAD related professionally.

Also, it's just lots of fun to work with the printer.

Re: Unboxing Our New Desktop Pick and Place Machine

#62

Post by hoopladler »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #58
hoopladler wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this compare to doing it with a normal soldering iron? I just ordered a bunch of surface-mount components - just because they were so much cheaper, but I haven't really got any notion about good approaches yet.

I'd recommend that a beginner go with the iron. It's all too easy to overheat components with a hot air gun, unless you have one with excellent temperature control. Even then, you need to be aware of accidentally desoldering nearby components.

I've got pretty bad essential tremor (and bad eyeseight), so I was also wondering, what's a good way to keep the chips in place on the board? I was thinking of using a tiny dab of superglue.

Re: Unboxing Our New Desktop Pick and Place Machine

#63

Post by jstanley »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #60
jstanley wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you don't want it to phone home on every boot.

I can't thing of any (realistic) reason for a P&P machine to be connected to the internet.

Exactly.

OP said:

> Interesting that for such an inexpensive but specialized hardware device it still has a "phone home on boot" feature.

Re: Unboxing Our New Desktop Pick and Place Machine

#64

Post by hoopladler »

gh02t wrote: post #18
marshray wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hundreds or thousands of something is typically not a hobbyist venture. But isn't this just begging the question? If hobbyists can make use of it, then by definition it's a hobbyist venture. Bringing down size, cost, and complexity is exactly the path by which so much has become available to hobbyists these days. Wasn't that long ago that a laser cutter, heaven forbid a 3d printer, was for pro shops only.

Yeah but I think there is a fundamental difference here. A 3D printer enables you to do things you can't do otherwise (fabricate custom mechanical parts). A pick-and-place enables you to do stuff you can already do with tweezers except in the most extreme cases. And likely do it faster than with a pick-and-place, because they require quite a lot of work to configure. Edit: a good analogy is a homebrewer putting caps…

Well, you can actually do stuff a 3d printer does by other means. It just typically requires more skills, and often more equipment.

I think your analogy falls down because an automatic bottlecapper does the same thing as you'd normally do by hand.

The difference for me is that a pick-and-place machine is an enabler. It would enable hobbyists to take on large-scale, distributed electronics projects - for which, right now, assembly time is normally the bottleneck.

If all hobbyists were solely interested in producing consumer-style devices, like bad versions of phones, or home-automation systems, then a pick-and-place machine wouldn't be a good idea for anyone. But there are actually lots of hobbyists that do stuff like data logging, where assembly time is a major problem.

Re: Unboxing Our New Desktop Pick and Place Machine

#65

Post by goty2 »

donkeyd wrote: post #61
lgbr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't make any sense at low scale, unless you want to spend endless time tinkering with the machine proper. For 3D printing this is becoming less true every day. 3D Printers are now extremely cheap, where sub-$300 printers make sense at low scale usage. A typical print from an outsourced printer like Shapeways might cost you about $20, and once you factor in the cost of the material when you print yourself, it…

Exacly! I have an FDM printer (~$300) and it's great to have it at home. When I design something, I can do a partial print at low quality to check for clearances within an hour. Then I can modify the design and print an optimized version. It makes for a really short feedback loop and if I mess something up, I don't need to pay the base fee again. And I'm a true hobbyist, I don't do anything hardware or CAD related pr…

That is still, as you say, a hobby though. The future of hardware design is decreasing the difference between prototype and production. Similar to what containers have done for software.

3d printed parts and PCBs can be done in as little as 12 hours. You can then without any modification do small production runs anywhere from ten to a thousand pieces (which isn't unrealistic outside consumer hardware). You could even 3d print moulds and do injection moulding.

I think partly why people say that hardware isn't iterative enough is that they are doing it the wrong way. They spend too much time on prototyping, which means they then have to make everything perfect for a large production runs to average out the costs.

Re: Unboxing Our New Desktop Pick and Place Machine

#66

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

hoopladler wrote: post #62
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd recommend that a beginner go with the iron. It's all too easy to overheat components with a hot air gun, unless you have one with excellent temperature control. Even then, you need to be aware of accidentally desoldering nearby components.

I've got pretty bad essential tremor (and bad eyeseight), so I was also wondering, what's a good way to keep the chips in place on the board? I was thinking of using a tiny dab of superglue.

I am in a similar boat and I've found the easiest solution is to just find a friend who is better at soldering and a case of beer.

Even with practice I'm orders of magnitude slower than people with steady hands.

Re: Unboxing Our New Desktop Pick and Place Machine

#67

Post by couchand »

jabl wrote: post #41
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hundreds or thousands of something is typically not a hobbyist venture. Also remember that placing parts is only one step of the process. If you're going to automate assembly by purchasing a P&P, you should also be ready to do high-volume stenciling and have a fast oven. In any case, the time spent aligning the machine and setting up reels can be a significant fraction of the time to just place parts manually. In som…

> I've soldered literally thousands of through-hole boards and SMT is much faster and easier to do by hand. Sorry for going off-topic, but do hobbyists actually solder SMT's manually nowadays? Or does everyone use some kind of off-the-shelf/DIY reflow oven? And if so, are stencils obligatory or is it feasible to just apply paste manually? I've been thinking of getting back (or well, properly starting if you will) my…

Use a toaster oven or a skillet, they both work great!

https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/60

https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/59

I've been skilletting my boards (fabbed by OSHpark) for the last few months, and it's really easy. As another commenter mentioned, use a syringe to deposit solder paste. It only takes a few boards to dial in the right amount to lay, and is actually surprisingly quick to place the parts (even 0603) with tweezers and then throw 'em on the skillet.

Re: Unboxing Our New Desktop Pick and Place Machine

#68

Post by milesvp »

goty2 wrote: post #65
donkeyd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exacly! I have an FDM printer (~$300) and it's great to have it at home. When I design something, I can do a partial print at low quality to check for clearances within an hour. Then I can modify the design and print an optimized version. It makes for a really short feedback loop and if I mess something up, I don't need to pay the base fee again. And I'm a true hobbyist, I don't do anything hardware or CAD related pr…

That is still, as you say, a hobby though. The future of hardware design is decreasing the difference between prototype and production. Similar to what containers have done for software. 3d printed parts and PCBs can be done in as little as 12 hours. You can then without any modification do small production runs anywhere from ten to a thousand pieces (which isn't unrealistic outside consumer hardware). You could even…

I think you may he missing the parent's point, which is he's using the printer to speed up his design loop. This has heen one of the biggest driving forces I've seen in the commercial use of 3d printers. Sure you can outsource your 3d printing to get much better and higher volume printing, but when you're designing you don't need volume, and often don't need quality either. Quick turn around often is key in design work, and having an in house printer can really reduce total turnaround time.

Re: Unboxing Our New Desktop Pick and Place Machine

#69

Post by goty2 »

milesvp wrote: post #68
goty2 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is still, as you say, a hobby though. The future of hardware design is decreasing the difference between prototype and production. Similar to what containers have done for software. 3d printed parts and PCBs can be done in as little as 12 hours. You can then without any modification do small production runs anywhere from ten to a thousand pieces (which isn't unrealistic outside consumer hardware). You could even…

I think you may he missing the parent's point, which is he's using the printer to speed up his design loop. This has heen one of the biggest driving forces I've seen in the commercial use of 3d printers. Sure you can outsource your 3d printing to get much better and higher volume printing, but when you're designing you don't need volume, and often don't need quality either. Quick turn around often is key in design wo…

I am disagreeing with the parents point (or not really because they were talking about doing it as a hobby, which is great).

Yes, you can do design prototype revision A, B and C, then do production prototype A, B and C, and finally production version A, B and C. But then you have spent a significant amount of time and money refining prototypes and adding features. That forces you to large production runs with huge risk, because you have already made the investment. What I am saying is that you should just make the production prototype with less features and ship that. Because that is how you go to market quickly, which is usually the larger point of such development.

This is also why Shenzhen wins over hackerspaces (which are also great btw) but that is another story.

Re: Unboxing Our New Desktop Pick and Place Machine

#70

Post by TaylorAlexander »

petra wrote: post #35
jotux wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macrofab(macrofab.com) is pretty close to this, as is SeeedStudio (SeeedStudio.io).

Also circuithub, and potentially tempo automation , once they'll have some more capacity.

Tempo Automation has historically been super high priced. I haven’t looked in to their prices lately tho.
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