Who likes tinkering :)

[K_F]

I've got tired of all these really expensive PCB board auto pickers and reflow kits.
After months of searching through the net, I haven't found anything decent and 'cheap'
So we make a plan.. 

I bought myself a DIY CNC kit a while back, and decided to convert it into a PCB automatic assembler/reflow kit.
It powered by what is called an Area Laser... just a dispersed laser beam.
Has an IR Camera.... auto picker placer, auto reflow... you know all the toys one wants.

The nearest commercial price at the mo is around 4K-5K USD  , and this is just a the basic thing.
What I have in mind goes for around 6K+, but I reckon I can get it all done for about 1K USD equivalent.

Accuracy looks good 200 steps per 360 degrees, 1mm thread comes to around 5 microns - and this is before micro-stepping
Look at a 200x200mm PCB area... so it'll be great for those small projects.
The long term plan is to have an auto-feeder attachment.

I have all the pieces for construction, minus 3 frame items and the laser which I'm busy sourcing from a supplier.
This will be the most expensive item, so it might push the price up to 2K.. - hopefully not, but it's still a lot cheaper 
I'm just working through the construction ideas, until the laser is finalised.

[Siekmanski]

Hi K_F,

Are you going to use the laser for the soldering process?
I'm doing the same thing as you, building and constructing a CNC machine for PCB milling, pick and place etc.
I have almost all items at home and nearly ready to start building.
I have bought a 5W blue laser with a focus point of < 0.5 mm and I hope it can melt the solder paste.
With aluminium extrusion I'm going to build the frame. ( more freedom in building )
For the pick and place i bought a small steppermotor with a hollow shaft.
I hope to start with it soon, had to delay my project for a few months.

Have fun, building your project.

[mineiro]

hello sir K_F;
looks good, you can adjust to be a 3d printer.

[K_F]

The laser module is a 50W semiconductor one - they have 100W ones as well - I'm afraid of the prices , maybe I can get a 'sample' cheaply
With some focusing one can get about 20x the power so it's a bit of experimenting.
The whole idea to to enable BGA pick-n-place, reflow, repairs..etc.., but it can handle any SMT chips.


mineiro: I'd think all one has to do is change the head and base plate, and you'll have a 3D Printer. At the moment this thing has a 100mm vertical movement which is ok for most small printing.

[Siekmanski]

Searched the net for the 50W semiconductor laser, that's a lot of power but really expensive.
I guess it's needed for a wider beam to be able to solder BGA chips.

My construction is almost the same as yours, only I'm using Hiwin linear guid rails and Hiwin carriages for more precision.
And I desided to use aluminium V-slot extrusions to make it a lot easier to construct and easier to line everything up and still have a very rigid frame. The work area will be 300 * 300 * 200 mm.

Also bought a very nice and small computer with Windows 10 full version preinstalled incl. the product key, called the LattePanda for $119.
Dimension of the board: 88 * 70 * 20 mm.
And a 7 inch touch screen.

http://www.lattepanda.com/product-details/?pid=1

Had to have one. 
Don't know if I'm going to use it for for the CNC machine.
It's a great little PC to make it a standalone machine though.

Are you writing your own software to control the CNC machine?

[K_F]

Are you writing your own software to control the CNC machine?

If needs be I'll make the PC software to convert PCB placement to GCode.
That Panda could be useful in image control and stand-alone operation, as I'm also looking for an InfraRed USB camera (30USDs).
There are a few of these floating around.

I'm making a stepper controller board with it's own USB and card slot. (have half designs lying around on my PC  )
I wasn't happy with the one's available, as they all fall short on a few specs here and there.
You could mix and match but then you have to make compromises.
 

[Siekmanski]

GCode is a nice and not that difficult protocol and widely used.

For many usb cameras you can simply remove the ir filter from the lens.

I'm using these stepper controllers they have a very wide "Microstep Resolution Selection" up to 51200 steps per revolution.
And a metric step selection from 1000 to 50000 steps per revolution.
http://eu.stepperonline.com/24-phase-nema-23-stepper-motor-driver-2450vdc-15a45a-256-microstep-m542t-p-293.html

And 3 stepper motors: Nema 23 CNC Stepper Motor 2.8A 1.9Nm(269oz.in)
http://eu.stepperonline.com/3pcs-of-nema-23-cnc-stepper-motor-28a-19nm269ozin-23hs302804s-p-396.html

I'm also building my own controller interface card:
FTDI for serial communication between the PC and an ATMega328 microcontroller programmed by myself to control everything.

Luckily there are only four functions needed for the movements of the motors.
XYZ linear movement and an Arc. function. ( including ramp up and ramp down )

It will be a another time consuming project. 

[K_F]

I'd take their micro-step figures with a pinch of salt.
General consensus is that anything beyond 16 micro steps (3200 steps per rev) is pushing the physical capability of the Nema drives.
8 micro-steps is considered sensible, for consistent accuracy.

You'd probably need specialised ($$$) motors for that accuracy, and then will their hardware work well with this type of motor - it'll be interesting.
 

[Siekmanski]

Yeah I know, all marketing bulls**t. I'm aiming at 0.001 mm precision with 10 mm acme thread and 1mm pitch = 1000 steps.
Hope the small pitch can handle the torque. Else I use 10 mm acme thread with 2mm pitch and 2000 steps.
But 0.01 mm precision is fine too...
I wonder if the metric steps will be linear and are equal in distance per step? We will see...
I've searched the net for 10 mm acme thread with 1.8 mm pitch with no luck.

[hutch--]

I have seen a gadget in a Chinese catalogue with a 2 axis table that used a low powered laser to write data on light weight materials like wood and leather. Handy for making short runs of a product without high printing costs.

[K_F]

Been hunting around for a week or two for a control board for der machine.

What I'm not happy with wrt the Rassberry's, Pandas.. ect, is that you're running on top of somebody else's code/'os'.
If they're stuffed up somewhere.. you're screwed.

I want absolute control  , and if I stuff up I can fix it.... so I've settled for this toy.
https://www.altera.com/products/boards_and_kits/dev-kits/altera/max-10-fpga-development-kit.html

A little more expensive than the other kits, but it saves me from designing the whole pcb system.
All I have to do is design the peripherals to I/F to the I/Os (of which there are plenty.

LVDS for cameras, ADCs for temperature... and plenty for motor and heat control.
The NIOS soft processor to play with and bake your cake any way you want to... 

Edt: Forgot to mention assembly programming ...whoooooot !!

[Siekmanski]

That's a beast of a development kit. Plenty of goodies on board.
Is it gonna be a stand-alone machine?

[K_F]

The development idea is..

1) Connect it to a PC via USB - The PC downloads the GCode - The Kit executes the Gcode.
2) The Kit will have an IR camera for positioning (with the hdmi o/p to a monitor) and temperature measurement.
3) The Stepper motor controllers are isolated from the kit (don't want feedback spikes  ) with their own PSU.

Once that is up and running I'll use the kit to assemble the controller I really want, which will have a USB/u-card slot/Touch-screen.. so you just plug in a memory usb thingy.. and away it goes..
It will use the same FPGA family, Altera/Intel that is,  as it would be a waste to go to a different FPGA manufacturer. Beside I see Intel leading the way with FPGA's now.. but who knows!

Simple   

[Siekmanski]

Simple   

Yeah Right! 

Do you have experience in assembly on a FPGA?
Do the intel FPGA's use x86 mnemonics?

[K_F]

Do you have experience in assembly on a FPGA?

A little on Velilog, Vhdl, but that's only if you want to create something new.
They have IPs (intelectual property - they call it), which are already designed.. so it's like lego block assembling.
There's a NIOS processor IP.. so like every processor  there's assembly programming for this 
I just have to learn a new assembly, this will be about the fourth one in my life time.. so it's no biggie

Do the intel FPGA's use x86 mnemonics?

Not that I know of.. but I think you create your own language with the NIOS soft cpu - I'll comment on this later.
 

I knew it was here somewhere... looks like a usefull feature.
https://www.altera.com/products/processors/benefits/hardware-acceleration.html