Homebrew PCBs

I've grown lazy and outsource everything it seems these days.

I've found silvercircuits.com can make a doublesided board for $54 shipped
which is way cheaper than I can do it.  By the time I run everything and
clean it up it has taken at least two hours extra over just emailing the PCB
files over to silver circuits.  I figure my free time is worth at least
$25/hr.

I still haven't found a good solution to assembly however.  I was thinking
of trying to find some college student to assemble my fine SMT parts but
haven't had any luck.

So I thought it'd be useful to make my own pick and place machine.

I'm lucky and have several XYZ tables accurate to .001" or so that I picked
up off ebay for under $1000 and control it with Labview.  The last thing I
need a good repeatable way of vacuum gripping these chips and tiny
resistors.

Any suggestions?  Thanks.
Also, my life is so much better now that I moved to Labview FPGA and a
PCI-7833R board.  No more microcontrollers except premade boards like a
wireless one TI RF2500 (complete with battery pack).


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Interesting ideea. It's a long thread on CNCZone about this kind of
construction. Few things that should be considered are related to
alignment of board, components even in reel tape have a rotation about
few degrees, some machine are using cameras to correct alignment or
detect the losing of component during travel ...

I think that this YouTube video has some interesting ideas for 
homebrew pick'n'place capabilities:

     http://ciciora.com/picknplace.html

Keep us all posted on what you're doing along these lines.
Mark


--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, Henry Liu <henryjliu@...> wrote:
>
> I've grown lazy and outsource everything it seems these days.
> 
> I've found silvercircuits.com can make a doublesided board for $54 
shipped
> which is way cheaper than I can do it.  By the time I run 
everything and
> clean it up it has taken at least two hours extra over just 
emailing the PCB
> files over to silver circuits.  I figure my free time is worth at 
least
> $25/hr.
> 
> I still haven't found a good solution to assembly however.  I was 
thinking
> of trying to find some college student to assemble my fine SMT 
parts but
> haven't had any luck.
> 
> So I thought it'd be useful to make my own pick and place machine.
> 
> I'm lucky and have several XYZ tables accurate to .001" or so that 
I picked
> up off ebay for under $1000 and control it with Labview.  The last 
thing I
> need a good repeatable way of vacuum gripping these chips and tiny
> resistors.
> 
> Any suggestions?  Thanks.
> Also, my life is so much better now that I moved to Labview FPGA 
and a
> PCI-7833R board.  No more microcontrollers except premade boards 
like a

> wireless one TI RF2500 (complete with battery pack).
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

you can use a medical needle with a small piece of silicon, or buy a 
manual SMT vacume pick tool for the tube and typicaly 3 different 
size suction cup. 
  the main thing is to make a Selenoid needle valve to run the 
vacuum on = "pick " and Vacume Off = "place"  operation. 

for very high desnity parts like BGA , send it to advance Assembly, 
they have a SMT Proto special.

BoonS


--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, Henry Liu <henryjliu@...> 
wrote:
>
> I've grown lazy and outsource everything it seems these days.
> 
> I've found silvercircuits.com can make a doublesided board for $54 
shipped
> which is way cheaper than I can do it.  By the time I run 
everything and
> clean it up it has taken at least two hours extra over just 
emailing the PCB
> files over to silver circuits.  I figure my free time is worth at 
least
> $25/hr.
> 
> I still haven't found a good solution to assembly however.  I was 
thinking
> of trying to find some college student to assemble my fine SMT 
parts but
> haven't had any luck.
> 
> So I thought it'd be useful to make my own pick and place machine.
> 
> I'm lucky and have several XYZ tables accurate to .001" or so that 
I picked
> up off ebay for under $1000 and control it with Labview.  The last 
thing I
> need a good repeatable way of vacuum gripping these chips and tiny
> resistors.
> 
> Any suggestions?  Thanks.
> Also, my life is so much better now that I moved to Labview FPGA 
and a
> PCI-7833R board.  No more microcontrollers except premade boards 
like a

> wireless one TI RF2500 (complete with battery pack).
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>