Pick and Place Machine

We are at a good point to release. We are currently working on making a great video showing off the machine, and will be setting up our KickStarter very soon.

We were just notified that we are a semifinalist for the Hackaday prize! This is very unexpected! We only applied for the prize on the last day applications were being accepted. There are so many great projects this year and we are honored to be included in this group competing for such a great prize in creativity and ingenuity! Best of luck to all the semifinalist!

So today we successfully made our first board using our Pick and Place! We have many times tested the job, but this time we added the solder paste. Without having to change anything the PnP placed the board without error. It's exciting to finally see your work pay off! Here's to never placing one of these board by hand every again!

The machine is now fully functional. With all the additions we have made (upward looking camera, error checks) the machine is now slower than it previously was. There are many ways available for us to speed up we just haven't worked on them yet. We see speed as something that is nice to have, but a working machine comes first.

To speed up we will be adding a GPU (currently doing everything on the CPU). Also, we will be making a new head that will increase speed as well as rotational accuracy. We can change a lot of when we are doing certain processes as well to add to speed. These are all things we are going to be working on now so stay tuned!

New videos coming soon!

Hello everyone, We have a lot going on in the next few months. We will be at 5 different Maker Faires all over the East coast during a 6 week period. We hope to have the KickStarter up while we are out on the road, so peole can go home from the Faires and find us.

We have just finished adding a ton of new error detections to help keep the machine as autonomous as possible. Now it can see if it picked a part up or not. If it doesn't pick up a part it will automatically go and try to pick up another part. Also, we are pretty much flawless on placement of IC's now which we are very excited about.

We've added a function to where if it sees the part was not properly picked up it will discard the part in a bin for that specific part. This way expensive parts can be reused if not successfully used the first time. Also, we have added a function where the pnp can switch pick tips without having to re-calibrate with the new tip. This function saves a lot of time on jobs where multiple pick tips are needed.

I will try to better keep up on updates in the future, and I hope to see some of you at the Maker Faires!

Our latest test video. This video is a test to see where errors would occur. We were testing to see if our vision could recognize parts in our feeders, parts in different kinds of trays, and parts from cut tape. We were also testing the automatic tool changer and the upward looking camera (located between the auto feeders). The test placement was successful, and we will now be adding more error checks as well as optimizing for increased speed. This test was NOT meant to show the current speed of the pick and place.

There are some obvious things that need to be fixed/optimized. We are currently working to get these things done. We wanted to wait to post another video till we had those things ready, however, we have had a few people write in wanting to see the progress we have made.

Hey everyone we are closing in on 100 followers! Thanks to everyone who has followed and skulled our project so far! Every follower and every skull are a tremendous help. They help us get more views to build awareness of our project, to get our names out there, and to get featured on Hackaday like we currently are!

If you like the project please follow us, give us a skull, and leave us a comment. We love to hear what you have to say about the project.

Thanks!

-ProtoVoltaics Team

Official schedule for those who would like to see the machine in person.

Cincinnati Ohio Mini Maker Faire August 28,29
Orlando Maker Faire (Florida) September 12, 13
Maryland maker Faire September 20
World Maker Faire (New York, Queens) September 26,27
Atlanta Maker Faire (Georgia) October 3,4
Pittsburgh Maker Faire October 10,11

We are frustratingly close to being done. Everyone has been working long hours, and even with the vacations everyone here is feeling a bit exhausted. None the less, we are all very excited about getting this finished, and getting a new video out.

Now accepting donations of energy drinks. :P

Vacation time is over, and it's time to get back to work. We've officially been invited to as many Maker Faires as we could attempt to go to. Starting in Cincinnati Ohio, then to Orlando, Maryland, New York, Atlanta, and lastly Pittsburgh.

That's a lot of driving!!!

So it is July and people are taking their weeks off one by one. Even I just got back from my vacation. It's great to work hard, but it's also great to get out with the family and explore a little bit too. We will be pushing our KickStrater Campaign back to sometime in the middle of August. We have delayed the KickStarter mostly because of our CV breakthrough. We are now placing components more accurately than ever! We want to be able to have the best KickStarter we can possibly have, and we believe having a video showing much greater accuracy will be a great boost.

Also, we are now much faster than the video shown in our details. In that video we are placing about 800 components per hour. We are now much faster, and of course more reliable. The next videos will show it all: speed, accuracy, repeatability, ability to place multiple boards, the smallest part we can place, the largest part we can place, the lowest pitch part we can place, auto tool changing, and the CV and UI!