Brians Pick and Place Project

I would like to introduce you to the diy pick and place machine which I have been working on with my brother for the past year.

The machine is driven via the Mach 3 API using a custom .Net windows app via a SmoothStepper Ethernet interface for driving the main stepper motors and I also use an Atmel microcontroller to drive a stepper motor for the component picker system.

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The machine had to fit into a small space in my loft workshop and contain all the power and drive system within its own footprint.

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The chip feeder is a vibration design using a vibration motor from an xbox game controller.
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The tape fed components are supplied via modified panasonic feeders (cheap via ebay) and is actuated via an air ram.
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The pnp machine has two picker heads driven by NEMA 8 motors.
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The first version of the controller system used 7 different control boards and we have just finished an upgrade to make a single USB host control board which uses a Microchip PIC as the USB host and this controls the vacuum valves, led lighting for the camera module and head led, vibration motor control and communicates via I2C to an Atmel processor which drives the picker head system.
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The new control board has in circuit programming ports so the code can easily be changed if needed.
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Full details with photos and videos are on my project blog at Brian Dorey.com | DIY Pick and Place and i have a lot of videos of the project on my YouTube channel Brian Dorey - YouTube

Very impressive! Kudos to you guys. Couldn't see a video of the machine working for a living or are you not quite there yet? Also would be interested to see more about the camera rotation control system.

Very impressive !. A PLC would have been my starting point but that's just me, there are many ways to achieve the same end result.

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Originally Posted by irving2008

Very impressive! Kudos to you guys. Couldn't see a video of the machine working for a living or are you not quite there yet? Also would be interested to see more about the camera rotation control system.

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The first run of the machine building a board is on DIY automatic Pick and Place first board run - YouTube and the latest one with the new control board is DIY Pick and Place USB Controller Board - YouTube and testing the board script starts at 2:20

Uploaded the new software we wrote to drive the diy pick and place machine with the source code and pcb files available from https://github.com/briandorey/PNPControllerUSB and the blog post about the software on Brian Dorey.com | Pick and Place USB Control Software