Good day, I have sent a few messages with some questions regarding some custom cables I would like made and I have not heard anything back in over a week. Is DirtyPCB's services still in operation?
I just checked again and 4L and 6L PCB pricing is whacked. If one selects a non protopack quantity the 4L and 6L cost is $0... Can someone look into this, as I am sure that the cost is not free.
Just a heads up, but Ian needs to correct a problem with the DHL shipping charges to Canada (and possibly other Countries too)... they are much lower than they should be. I was just checking on the price of PCB and found that the DHL Shipping to Canada is way lower than it should be... i.e. Qty 50, 5cm x 8cm is showing DHL shipping as $4 from HK or $0 from China.
Thank you for your response! Indeed, I recognize the challenges in doing what I am proposed given the lack of standardization on the drive (X-Y-Z, etc) circuitry of the various manufacturers. However, I was thinking more of a generic approach... i.e. supplying the front end portion with documenting the Input and Output requirements... and thus leaving the connections/electronics of connecting to the PnP machine in the hands of the user. Obviously the User/purchaser of your "kit" would have to have a certain skill st, etc but I do believe there are people capable of doing this... I know I could do it and I am sure that there are others equally or even more capable.
Why I even mention it is because there was a lot of engineering that went into the older equipment feeders, etc... and these feeder mechanisms are built ridiculously well... and for high reliability, longevity, etc. Secondly, the feeder assemblies are very well supported and can be found anywhere (suppliers, Ebay, etc).
This is just an off the cuff thought... but why do you not offer some type of retrofitting service and/or kit for those users of older mainstream PnP machines (Juki/Zevatech, etc)? I say this, as there are a lot of older PnP machines that would truly benefit from the control software you have created...
On a secondary note, perhaps standardizing on some existing older PnP feeder mechanisms would also save you from having to reinvent the wheel. The benefit to your firm is that the current feeders are widely used, supported, and typically made to a very high quality.
As I said, I am just mentioning the above, as I think there is a large market for "upgrading" the older PnP machines with newer and better featured control software.
I have been doing some Spring Cleaning and I have one (1) M52221Demo board and one (1) M52233Demo board that I will give away (See Freescale's site for details on these boards). The boards work fine and were used to gain familiarity with the respective MCUs. If you are local to Edmonton, AB, Canada you can pick them up and if you are not I can mail them to you (Canada or US) for the price of shipping. If you wish pictures, etc let me know and I will post them. If no one wants them then they will be going to our local recycle centre in a week's time.
Wow, you have done a lot of work and the price looks to very reasonable! Just out of curiosity how do you handle different part sizes? Do you sort your PnP file and then populate all of one part, then the next? If so, then do you allow for different pickup nozzles, etc? Thirdly, what if the part is picked crooked and/or moves during placement (i.e. vibration, etc)... do you compensate for this? Lastly, do you have any sensoring if the part is not picked and/or is dropped before placement?
Ever since I found a source for inexpensive Stainless stencils ($20 for unframed, $40 for framed) I rarely hand solder prototypes unless there are only a few components.
would you like to share your source for stainless stencils?[/quote]
Good day Adnc,
Sure, no problems. I use sitopway in China (sitopway.com) and I deal with Kevin. They are excellent and usually I have my stencils in about a week including the shipping time (2 days for the stencil and 4-5 day shipping via DHL). Shipping is around $20-$40 depending on the number of stencils and whether they are framed or not (i.e. weight and size dependent). They will soon be celebrating their Chinese New Year and so they will soon be closed until the end of the Month.
[quote author="Sleepwalker3"]If you are only doing a few boards here and there, then it's easiest just to hand solder them with a normal soldering station and tweezers, I've done lots of things like that, even fine pitched 0.5mm pitch TQFP devices with a couple of hundred pins. <snip>[/quote]
Good day Sleepwalker3,
You are quite right in that hand soldering can lead to excellent results. However, I found that using a stainless Stencil, solder paste, and a reflow toaster oven takes about the same time... but yields much better results... plus the boards look a lot better, as there is less solder used on the small discretes (i.e. 0603 parts).
Ever since I found a source for inexpensive Stainless stencils ($20 for unframed, $40 for framed) I rarely hand solder prototypes unless there are only a few components.
thank you very much for your answer. I've seen Wills reflow oven which looks really nice. Indeed it might be a much better solution but since lack of space in my tiny lab I had the idea with the hot plate.
Do you think the results with a toaster oven would be better?
Cheers[/quote]
Good day Adnc,
You are most welcome!
A suitable convection toaster oven does not take up much space... indeed probably a little more than a hot plate, but not overly so. As for which is better? I have not use a hot plate, but given that one would need to manually monitor it, etc leaves me to believe that a automatically controlled toaster oven would yield superior results. Remember that solder paste should really follow a temperature profile to be used correctly. Using a toaster oven with a controller can easily follow whatever temperature profile you wish. If you plan on making boards regularly I would recommend going the toaster oven route with a suitable controller. The results are really impressive.
As I said, there seems to be more units becoming available. ... now if only semi automatic screen printers were equally plentiful and reasonably priced.
