Electronics geeks have always made their own devices - I have personally designed and etched circuit boards and stuffed them with components and built various devices ranging from audio and electronic music to computer interfaces and some scientific instrumentation./ Fun stuff.
With the advances in electronics, one aspect is that the parts have become much smaller - leading to a situation where some components are physically too small to be placed on a circuit board by hand - not accurate enough. Common components can be as small as 0.4 by 0.2 millimeters. Tiny!
The workaround is called a Pick and Place machine but these have been huge machines ( up to ten foot square) and correspondingly expensive (hundreds of K-bucks). Fortunately, other people have been working on this problem and here is one solution: LitePlacer From their website:
LitePlacer – The Prototyping Pick and Place Machine
LitePlacer is a pick and place machine aimed for a prototype building stage. LitePlacer:
- is accurate! – Reliably places 0402 passives
- is easy to assemble! – No special tools or precision instruments needed
- has vision! – Two cameras
- is affordable! – DIY kit is $1299
This is truly a fun time to be alive! There are now Chinese companies who will make good quality printed circuit boards for amazingly cheap. We will now see people setting up board stuffing businesses to take these boards and populate them with the required components and solder them. The Maker movement is solidly underway!
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