The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

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#63 – Shop bots, 450 mm fabs & redFrog – Pick and Place Palillogy

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzgAjjuqZM

redFrog (starts at 4:25):

SparkFun’s MC384:

And what can only be described as a “machine gun” pick and place (by Fuji)

Dave and Chris favor an IR reflow oven on eBay or on Amazon over the hotplate method of reflowing boards.

That’s all for this week. Be sure to leave us comments on anything you heard: good, bad or indifferent.

Comments

  1. ‘Ambient Field Conditioner’… what a load of crap.

    The only thing this contraption will create are anti-nodes of the monetary field in one’s wallet.

    The chip-shooter is nice. Why am I thinking of acupuncture?

  5. Re reflow ovens – DO NOT buy one of those cheap Chinese reflow ovens – they are rubbish and may set your new lab on fire. Just get a cheap toaster oven from a kitchen shop.

  7. I would have liked more discussion of real estate. I’m excited for Dave b/c I’m tired of working from my basement.

    I am amazed by the sheer quantity of baloney on the Blackbody webpage. They should have had it take batteries, and they should not have used the work quantum.

    I don’t understand the criticism of finance. Don’t we need smart people allocating capital to worthy projects? I agree Wall St was responsible for the financial crisis because they created fancy new models of risk that turned out to be wrong. Their customers who took excessive risk should get part of the blame too. Borrowers and lenders came together and entered stupid agreements. Even people who bought the CDOs and blindly believed the rating agencies share some of the blame.

    I agree banks don’t offer great products. I believe in bootstrapping businesses and running them with cash as much as possible. But if banks can come up with “financial products” that people love, more power to them. They’re job is to allocate our savings and investments to people with good ideas who need money to start or expand. That doesn’t seem like a bad industry.

    I loved the part of the show about setting up Dave’s new shop, deciding when a pick-and-place machine makes sense, and reflowing boards. I would like more discussion about board population and rework methods, both equipment and tricks to do it better.

    Thanks for the great show!!

    • The banksters did not allocate capital. They created “capital” out of thin air by printing money and they thus created a ponzi wealth effect and made debt slaves out of thousands of people. After they failed, they assigned the losses onto taxpayers by debasing the currency and grabbing tax dollars. No losses were assigned to those who bought bank bonds and the bonds of the government sponsored housing fiascoes called FannieMae and FreddieMac.
      There was no savings allocated to projects. It was a deliberate criminal conspiracy to create credit bubbles for their own profit. The central bank and the regulators permitted it and encouraged it, to rescue the previous ponzi scheme, which was the dot-com criminal conspiracy of 1999.
      There are no savings. It is all fake wealth. Your pension fund got left holding the bag, too. The third credit bubble is the government debt bubbles, which are trying to preserve the fake wealth of the last two credit binges by expanding government debt.

  8. I was interested in the discussion of DIY vs. commercial 3D printers. I’ve had my Makerbot Thingomatic (built from kit) for a month or two, and I’ve printed some pretty useful things without much hassle. Last weekend, I was able to fix our stand fan by printing a new coupler piece that I designed in just a few minutes (our Air Conditioner sucks, and it’s still getting up into the 80F’s here during the day). However, I definitely made the decision to go the Makerbot/DIY route for DIY reasons; if there’s a better tool for someone else’s purposes, I’m just glad to see the tech moving forward.

    • Also, I think you guys mentioned that the cost was around $2k. Just wanted to add that my total cost was around $1400 including my first couple of plastic spools (which last for many many prints). However, the hobby is becoming an addiction that’s cost me a bit more since then (still < 2k).

  9. That reflow oven is $850! I thought it was mentioned only $200? I think the hotplate is a better deal… even if it only can do one side of a board!

    Which (open source) 3d printer is Dave looking to get from the netherlands? Ultimaker? What’s wrong with reprap or botmill instead of the makerbot?

    • I’m not sure if the comment about the reflow oven is related to my comments. But as for the printers:

      Reprap has a larger upfront time-investment. Haven’t heard of Botmill until I read your comment, somehow. Ultimaker is about the same as the Makerbot in terms of effort. I might have picked it over the MB Thing-o-matic, but I literally read about it for the first time a day or two after I ordered my Thing-o-matic kit. The Ultimaker has a better feedrate/print-speed, but fewer operators. I actually don’t know much about the commercial options, since most of them are an order of magnitude more expensive than the DIY kits.

  10. Hi Dave,

    While I have to agree with your opinion on DIY semiconductor manufacturing, I have to take exception to your comments about DIY pick and place equipment.

    I would say that the speed of a P&P is pretty much irrelevant in a one-man or small shop. At first blush one might think that a slow machine might waste your time, however, given a reasonably reliable machine you would set it up, turn it on, and go do something else productive while it sits there in the corner assembling your PCBs. In this way it is a time multiplier. You’re essentially accomplishing two things at once.

    You suggest that if an individual needs to make a hundred or so boards they should be looking at contract manufactuers. Having played in that field, I would offer that setting up a deal with them, getting all your special or programmed parts and PCBs there, first article review, and your incoming inspection will cost you MUCH more time than hand building the same qualtity of boards. Sure, they can churn out 100 boards in 10 minutes, but the other time and cost overheads can kill you.

    Granted, the examples of machines out there at the moment have a ways to go before they achieve set-and-forget status, but as quickly as the DIY community moves I have no doubt that this technology will mature and become a real player in small-scale manufacturing.

    I watched that video of the slow machine a couple more times. It’s average cycle time (pick-move-place-return) is about 7 seconds. That means it’s PPH (placements per hour) is right around 500. Really, that’s not too bad.

    A number of things have to happen to make DIY P&P machines a viable piece of manufacturing equipment:

    1-They have to get away from stepper motor dead-reconing X-Y drives. For real accuracy and speed they need to be using servo based systems with true placement head position sensing.

    2-They have to get vision for both board fiducial measurement, and component X-Y-T position adjustment. (one look up camera, and one look down camera)

    3-Reasonable feeder designs need to be developed (although, the nozzle-pull method in that video is pretty brilliant).

    4-They need to be conveyorized. You need to be able to solder stencil a dozen board, line them up, and press “go”.

    None of those are huge problems, and I predict within a year or two, they will all be addressed.

    Then we just need to get people to stop using friggin hot plates for reflow!! 😎

    Great show as always, keep up the good work.

    John Schuch (shook)

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