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by gh02t 3067 days ago
You're not gonna be able to pick-and-place anything with hundreds/thousands of parts at a hobby price point. Those kinds of machines are massive by necessity and hugely complex; I just can't imagine it happening for the very small number of people who would want to do something like that. If it did happen by some miracle, it'd have to follow from some sort of major technical advance.

If you're one of the handful of hobbyists that want to do such complex projects I think contract manufacturing is probably a more realistic option. Not sure if you've ever set up a PnP before but it's a huge pain in the ass. I'd rather stencil and tweezer as long it was remotely practical. They are utterly mesmerizing to watch work once they're set up however...
1 comments
CamperBob2 3067 days ago
You're not gonna be able to pick-and-place anything with hundreds/thousands of parts at a hobby price point.

LitePlacer is almost there. IMHO the key is recognizing that production-oriented machines need to be fast, while hobbyist/small-shop prototyping machines don't. If I need to stuff a complex prototype board with 500 parts, I literally don't care if it takes all day and all night as long as I don't have to do it. Obviously production shops don't have that luxury, but I do.

Really, the only unsolved problem (at least at the 0402 and up level) is loose part pickup and orientation.

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mng2 3066 days ago
Agreed. Being a human pick and place for anything more than low tens of parts is incredibly unfun, and paying someone to manufacture one or two doesn't really make sense. I don't care if it takes a few days, I'd rather not be sitting for hours wearing down my fine motor skills and eyesight.
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thesmok 3066 days ago
If it takes more than an hour to place the components, your solder paste will likely flow all over the board and it will be pointless to reflow it.
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CamperBob2 3066 days ago
That's not a big concern for prototyping. It will reflow just fine. There might be a few solder balls rolling around afterward, maybe a bridge or two. Most of the time, this means your stencil apertures were too big, or that the cut-rate Chinese solder paste wasn't the bargain that it looked like on AliExpress.

Slump is a problem if you're trying to run a six-sigma process in a factory, of course, but that's not what's being discussed here.

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