You might want to consider adding the test pads to the outer frame so that you can test all of them at once rather than cutting them out one at a time. This might be helpful if you find a number of LEDs that are defective; you can just de-solder them and then put the board back into the PnP machine to re-populate with working LEDs.

One of our senior techs showed me the difference between stored/rested and freshly stirred solder paste. You can either stir it up manually or use a centrifugal planetary mixer (e.g Thinky ARE-250) to homogenize + degas the paste before use. Makes working with it a lot more consistent (also make sure it's warmed up to RT).

@asdomega

2 жыл бұрын

the Thinky Mixer is great, but definitly overkill for DIY. But you can mix the paste an the stencil by pushing it arround

@C00ltronix

Жыл бұрын

I have 5 years expired solder paste and it works fine for touch up jobs. Wouldn't use it in a printer though.

Its great seeing you so wxcited about what you have made and future plans and I can't wait to see Lumen with powered feeders in action. It's an amazing project and product.

I really love the project and the mentality behind it. Can‘t afford one yet but I love seeing the progress of the project. Really well done project!

@zachbrenner9959

2 жыл бұрын

Seeing this machine and the project makes me wish I had an electronics project I wanted to mass produce. I'd love to get one of these and support the project, but I just don't have a need to

You could "scan" the board for the paste before population to compare agains a known good sample.

So cool! Would love to see a motherboard build video at some point.

This is just awesome, mate. Well done! Very impressive.

Stephen, I would be super cautious before buying one of those solder paste printers. They all seem to look the same. But the one I bought a while back is so badly made it is practically useless.

This is great! Wish I could have gotten one back in 2016. Spent >$3000 and a couple of months getting a pnp from China. Didn't work half as good as yours. The "recycle" a component alone would have saved me a bunch. Component feeders lead-in and wrong setup can take a lot of $15 components out of play really fast. I like your manual feed for prototype quantities.

I strive for this same passion. I want one of these so bad. I’m an engineering student about to graduate and this is just inspirational to a young engineer

seems like your system would be able to detect the parts on the pcb when it's done, if it's recognising the different colour between the pad, like not green or black etc, black soldermask would be tricky, someone on youtube made a pnumatic rig for those manual nibblers, they are good but can also be a hassle to use, they can get gummed up, i normally close them then rotate it forward out of the gap

Such nice videos !!! Thanks a lot. If you wanna go full nerd, you could panelize the pcbs in a way that they could be tested before breaking apart. (not my idea, might be common, seen it on EEVblog). BUT additionally, one could automatically test in place, putting back in the PNP after reflow, and test using the vision system....

Awesome project!

great video! can't wait to put together my Lumen!

Great work ! and well done...cheers.

Stephen--I just watched a YT video by one of your customers. The Lumen was working well, and it seemed to a little faster than you've demonstrated here. He had the sound on while it was running, and this is the first time I've really heard the vacuum pump working. I'm not a fan. It must be a diaphram-type pump, which is why it's so loud and buzzy. I have been considering buying a Lumen, but I'd want to do some modifications. It's possible, for instance, to "store" vacuum in a tank (cars used to have vacuum reservoirs when they used vacuum motors to operate baffles in the AC/defrost ducts). Such a tank could be made from 3 or 4-inch PVC pipe, and the vacuum provided by a salvaged AC or refrigerator compressor (both pretty quiet) that would cycle on after several (maybe dozens) of pick 'n place movements. The control line that now starts the buzzy compressor on the Lumen would operate an air valve instead. The separate tank and compressor would have its own on/off control with hysteresis. It could also be placed in a sound box for make it even quieter. I just thought I'd pass those thoughts on to you.

@C00ltronix

Жыл бұрын

Put the pump in a thick housing from heavy material that does not resonate. There are also 12V pumps that claim to be very quiet.

A full width, dedicated squeegee is VERY much worth the effort to find. The best results come from doing a single pull for the whole PCB. In general, paste printing has a voodoo involved - but taking the time to get consistent and accurate paste deposition is gold.

@mikeselectricstuff

2 жыл бұрын

Absolutely. multiple passes risk too much paste squishing under the stencil. A stencil jig makes life a lot easier, as it allows tensioning. I use the Eurocircuits one, which is expensive and over-engineered, but works well

this is cool i need one...i don't know what i would make with it, but i love the technology.

thats awesome! any plans for a toolchanger head for paste dispensing or a hot air head?

What happened to the fancy component feeders with the self pealing tape removal system.... Thought that was going to play a big part of the LumenPnP machine

@arcasoy

2 жыл бұрын

He addressed that around 10 mins in

@ExplodingWaffle101

2 жыл бұрын

@@kestvvv ?? he said they were working on it

@andymouse

2 жыл бұрын

@@kestvvv He mentions that he's exited because the feeder will soon be available and there are details of them on the website, you haven't even watched the video, homemade PNP with 95 feeders ? what a load of bollocks your obviously full.

@thequickestfox6106

2 жыл бұрын

@@kestvvv 10:07 "And of course, we are working actively on powered feeders, and we are really hustling to try and get those out". He has shown them working in previous videos. I am also excited for them and see them as what makes this an excellent project and system. But there's no need for the negativity :( I feel that, Stephen has taken time out of overall development to begin distribution of the parts he was being asked to frequently. That's good business sense.

@andymouse

2 жыл бұрын

@@kestvvv Why be so rude and call this guy's work "Junk" ?

Suggestion: Perhaps you could have the Lumen visually check that all pads have paste? This would not be good for production runs, as would add considerable time, but for those of us only making a couple of boards, having the option to have themachine check that there is paste on all pads before placing would save human time re-working the boards ( Human time is more expensive than machine time ).

How is the PCB height determined during setup? Is the nozzle used to automatically detect the height by slowly going downwards, hitting the PCB, and simultaneously measuring vacuum changes, ie when hit the vacuum level changes? How is feeder height determined? The same procedure above could be used, but keeping the tape on during detection to avoid components getting out of pockets. You mentioned that one LED was not placed. Wouldn't the camera (which is used to correct component offset) detect that the component was not picked up, and set an alarm?

An improvement can be done to the Arduino test kit by adding a display like LCD1602, check the voltage drop when lighting up each pixel, each individual RGB, then display the test result on the screen. Better off add a buzzer to give a happy or sad tone.

Are you planning to continue work on solder paste extrusion and production line setup?

Just a little idea that came toind after remembering the video with the belt-driven pcb loader, would it be possible to have a nearly completely automated production line : just give the pasted pcbs at one input, components on one other and have the system autonomously feeding the pcbs in the pick and place, shove it afterwards in the reflow oven, pull the pcb out to make room for a new one, and autonomously depanelling pcbs (clough42 made a video about operating a depanelling plier with a little pneumatic cylinder, activated just by a pedal switch in his case)

@nidavis

2 жыл бұрын

much easier if you rebuild the reflow oven around a conveyor itself, then all processes advance linearly

Stephen made it big time ^^

Will you revisit the solder dispensing component?

Any ETA possible for those that missed the first 100 kits? Just wondering what sort of delays people are going to see in kits shipping.

Hi Stephen, what is the smallest pick head you can run? I’m interested in your solution independently but it would nice for some of my prototypes if it can handle stuff like MMC5603NJ size (very tiny). I have done a couple of proto by hand and microscope and it’s a pain. Cheers

The yellow and black colour scheme on the shirts and website looks really sleek and classy! Congrats on getting this far with the project! What's that stuff on the side of your headphones at 0:40?

@mpwsh

2 жыл бұрын

Looks like he converted his headphones to bluetooth

The point about forgetting to apply paste for on a spot on the stencil got me wondering: wouldn't it be possible to use the camera of the PNP to scan for the presence of the paste? From all I've seen so far, it seems that there's a good color difference between the "common" board colors and the paste, if you're not for chance handling gray PCBs, but I don't think I've even seen gray ones yet.

Automatic optimal inspection coming soon for solder paste checking? ;)

6:55 This real speed would be prefered xD

Cool vid, how many parts per hours on average can the Lumen place?

Do you need the fiducials all across the PCB ? I thought you only needed them in the four corners of the Panel.

Any news on the auto feeders units?

You want an industrial one? An industrial credit card? I didn't know they had those

Props!

Don't use Bi solder paste with any power electronics. It has very low melting and your parts may fall off when getting hot.

"cool" is the understatement.

What ever happens to the automatic part feeder??

Can you do a manual control mode? Where you basically use the onboard cameras and grabbers to place parts manually in real time?

@C00ltronix

Жыл бұрын

You can operate OpenPnP manually. Quite a lot of clicks though.

i believe you want to keep the blade at about 45 degree angle and let the solder roll

isnt it possible to let LumenPnP camera check if paste is Applied on the pads?

Another GREAT example of how others should do their Video Documentation! Keep up the amazing work!

Could there be scope for adding a basic AOI functionality to the existing camera to check that all components are placed correctly at the end of all placements?

@nidavis

2 жыл бұрын

could also check for proper solder paste before placing

@welshdave5263

2 жыл бұрын

@@nidavis I like that! I have to wonder of there is a open source AIO like open PNP. I guess with little more than coding this could perform all the operations.

@jessevanderzouw619

2 жыл бұрын

The camera has a narrow field of vision, but if you take multiple pictures and stitch them together, you could use AgnosPCB to check the board pre-reflow.

@welshdave5263

2 жыл бұрын

@@jessevanderzouw619 The AIO machine in the board assembly I worked at before going into design worked this way, real close up images but could stitch and export a whole board view.

Any idea when you might have stock again?

I was curious, why addressable lights? why not a ring of white leds with a fet, seems like it would save cost and be more effective as you are basically just running them white all the time?

@phiwatec2576

2 жыл бұрын

I guess you could use the different colors to detect some parts. This just makes it more flexible.

@LightCraftStudio

2 жыл бұрын

@@phiwatec2576 very good point, would be cool to see it utelize the techniques that camera trackers use where they flash a rainbow of colors to determine the best light to use for a part.

Can this be used for perler beads?

Why you gave up on the solder dispenser head?

Nice.

thanks

Seems like it would be much easier to have a cnc machine like this apply the solder paste for you while performing the pnp tasks.

@pjforde1978

7 ай бұрын

We have remarkably different internal metrics for "impossibly easy" sir

@operator8014

7 ай бұрын

@@pjforde1978 I toned down my hyperbole. Just for you.

What happened to the auto feeders? The only major change I'd like to see is a quick change head. This is so you can load up a solder past dispenser then swap out to a pick head or a glue head for doing double sided PCB. How is the GitHub going to change now that the machine name has changed?

@stephen_hawes

2 жыл бұрын

Powered feeders are up next! We just got machines out the door, now we're focusing on hiring so we don't need to do all the packing work ourselves, then a DFM pass on feeders and working on getting them available for sale. Github name switch is upcoming! Takes time to rename an organization and a project.

Your not using the auto feeders?

is there a reason the camera cant ensure there is solder paste on the pads too??

@KallePihlajasaari

2 жыл бұрын

Good idea, With the multi colour light source it may be easy to determine if there is paste on a pad.

I want one of these so bad, but I don't actually have any use for one

Will it place 0402s?

5:38 what light diffuser have you got here?

@noel1637

2 жыл бұрын

And how did you managed to get openpnp detecting a black fiducial? 5:45!

Website says out of stock. 😔

I been an Smt programmer and operator for over 20 years... can you build an AOI machine?

How strong is the OpenPNP nozzle? could you put a tray or stack of them in its range and "PNP" ringlights into a test stand, camera checks colours and if the LEDs work and then the feeder picks moves them over to a good ro rework bin? Probalby to much automatisation. integrate with RPi for more data chaos :D

i see all the comments are 7 months old, but here we go... Where do you get a stencil?

cool

past printing is around 80% of SMT quality, don't negligate it!

@C00ltronix

Жыл бұрын

But poor printing really boost your repair skills ;-)

I work as a process engineer, why not dispense paste with your pnp

@envisionelectronics

2 жыл бұрын

Nobody does that.

@KallePihlajasaari

2 жыл бұрын

I think it is harder to meter such small doses of thixotropic paste accurately. Also it takes up time on an expensive CNC machine instead of a simple screen printing pass.

@Belginator

2 жыл бұрын

@@KallePihlajasaari I was told it was not an option, I grant you screen peinting is best but an extra cost

I really love this project en your enthusiasm. But I can’t get over that umbilical cord solution. It really looks like a dirty hack. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Stephen, It would be helpful if you could speak bit slow your presentation

PLEASE show the unit in REAL TIME operation. The video title was Production but you fast forward to super speeds each time you show the unit actually running. How SLOW or FAST is the device in real time??

@ChristopheBeauregard

2 жыл бұрын

You can see actual speed at 6:39

Hi. Congrats. I would like to buy the kit, but Where do I buy the electronic components? And how much do they cost? Compare to buying an already made board

Wish i could afford one

@studentofedison421

2 ай бұрын

Wish i could make one

This lead phobia is unreasonable these days...

Man, just a single pass or you will end up with too much paste!

First