Pick and place help

[ladyada]

hey im totally crashing this party! unfortunately im booked for a while and cant write any code or do much layout because of other commitments for a few months....

that said, i have a p&p so i may be able to fab boards once the design is in a 'release' state. (its best if the board only has parts on the top and they're 0603 or larger - the machine can handle 0201 but the feeders are different because of part spacing which makes it $. its not good for 'one off' fabbing because the setup time takes many hours)

i design open source hardware for a living and ive worked with a bunch of OSH designers (ybox, drawdio, tv-b-gone, etc) and we've always worked out a plan where everyone is happy. so let me know if this sounds like something you'd like me to be involved in :)

EDIT: crap, i should have made a new thread. can someone moderate-move this post?

[jack.gassett]

Ladyada,

Wow, thank you for the offer of help with assembling boards. I have wished many many times that I had a pick and place machine... I think the only thing holding us back is that Ian and I had discussed using Seeed Studio to manufacture the boards. So I think the plan was to use them for assembly for the initial boards. Having said that I would love to figure out some way to include you in this project. Maybe we can have a discussion about partnering with you as a distributor once the design is complete? Is that even something you would be interested in?

At the very least I would like to have a discussion with you about your experiences with the pick and place machine. I've been wanting to buy one for a while now, it would be great to get some advice.

Jack.

[ladyada]

Ladyada,

Wow, thank you for the offer of help with assembling boards. I have wished many many times that I had a pick and place machine... I think the only thing holding us back is that Ian and I had discussed using Seeed Studio to manufacture the boards. So I think the plan was to use them for assembly for the initial boards. Having said that I would love to figure out some way to include you in this project. Maybe we can have a discussion about partnering with you as a distributor once the design is complete? Is that even something you would be interested in?

At the very least I would like to have a discussion with you about your experiences with the pick and place machine. I've been wanting to buy one for a while now, it would be great to get some advice.

sure, adafruit could distribute or manufacture. there are some benefits to having domestic manufacture (theres also benefits for having offshore, its all tradeoffs :) ) - in a previous dream i started to sketch out a full set of completely open-source-hardware tools, im still doodling designs but am making progress on some. im more interested in '1 purpose' tools like a LA or scope which is why this caught my eye! of course in 2010 id also be interested in poking at the hardware/software for SUMPPUMP as well! particularly since i have little experience in such things :D

for p&p info, we have a pick and place wiki & forum check wiki.ladyada.net and forums.adafruit.com, we have a small but excited community. please visit, many non-machine-owners ask questions all the time.