Rapid Prototyper (aka Flutterwumper) Build Session (Sat. 11/7 2pm)
November 5th, 2009 by uptownmaker
There’s been a lull (partly due to my becoming a parent, partly due to summertime/school opening blues) in work on the rapid prototyping system. It turns out that this was a blessing in disguise because I recently got my hands on something that will make this project a significantly different scope.
My company threw out an old solder paste inspection machine. It WAS a machine intended for use inspect printed circuit boards after they’ve had the solder paste applied to them but before they’ve had components placed. As far as I know, it is in full working order.
Before. After. The first accessory.
In short, this is a working X-Y gantry with sub-millimeter accuracy. It does have SOME Z motion, too, but not much- I’d guess in the end we can adjust the limits and get something along the order of one inch in Z.
For a platform to build a prototyper, you can’t get much better than this. And it’s in my garage.
See the forum thread for further details or schedule changes.
- 2 Comments »
- Posted in Posts
November 6th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
All Right!!!!
Solder Paste inspection, it seems like this machine could also have supported solder paste application as well with all of it’s movement capability, but perhaps that is a manual procedure.
There is a cool article on DIY solder pasting at Spark Fun here. http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/tutorial_info.php?tutorials_id=58&page=
November 10th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Limited Z access might be a problem for a 3D printer. HOWEVER, what about a painting robot? Connect 4 aquarium tubes with cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink reserves and figure out how to translate a digital image into a painting.