Chris Holden of Nerd Club has been working on a CNC pick-n-place machine and wrote a post on his blog detailing it’s assembly:
Hand-soldering SMT components is slow going. And almost an hour per board section is pretty woeful. So it’s time to start seriously thinking about this CNC pick-n-place machine. Steve is going to go beserk.
I went down to BuildBrighton for a few hours this evening, with Grumpy Paul (he doesn’t have a G+ link). Over a few hours, we cobbled together a basic x/y axis, using some 12mm linear bearings and stainless steel rods that have been lying around for ages. We’ve mounted the steppers onto the y-axis carriage – one on each side rather than a single long belt down the middle, as we need to keep the middle clear for placing components. Also, because we’re expecting the head to travel to the edge(s) to pick up components from a tape reel, we couldn’t really use the moving y-axis bed approach we implemented in our CNC drill from about 18 months ago.