[time-nuts] OT stuffing boards: was GPS interface/prototyping board

[Mark Sims]

I have seen pick and place systems built around  CNC machines (same applies to 3D printers).  The reel strips are fed through a slotted guide.  The pickup head has a finger (or some use the pickup nozzle... a flat tipped hypodermic needle) that is used to advance the reel.  It drops down into the component pocket on the reel (or the index holes) and pulls the strip forward one pocket length.  This movement also peels back the tape cover strip.  The nozzle moves to the center of the pocket,  sucks up the component,  rotates it,  moves to the position on the PCB, and places the component.

Translating the design files into gcode commands for the required head movements is a fairly trivial bit of code (says the man (me) who wrote a 90,000+ line C program that can translate between the dialects of over 100 different CNC machines, 3D printers, and CAD programs).

Vision system is nice,  but a decent CNC is more than accurate enough for 0402 sized parts.  Again, surface tension is your friend.