Wondered if anyone’s used/bought/built one(and also if we have one in the space? I am currently making a bunch of boards and thought they sound great compared to struggling to pickup components from tape with tweezers. But have no idea what to buy or if they’re as easy to make (to a decent standard) as it seems?
I am mostly working with 0603 and a few soics etc and it would be great to pickup everything with the same tip.
Cheers!
I’ve always used tweezers. take the components out of the tape into small plastic lids, pre-warm the board and paste the pads, pick / place individually from there. We have a metered solder dispenser in the space but no placing machine.
I have seen these used with sine success.
Courty
Hola, Courty,
Can I just confirm “sine” as in Latin, i.e. “none” or was it a typo and you meant “some”?
I have used a similar one to the link you posted and found it useful in repair situations when pre-heating the board was not an option… but it wasn’t much more fun than the fuddling with a tweezer. Still, a bit variety can keep the anger at bay when doing fiddly stuff?
Apologies, trying to reply on my iPhone with my fat fingers is never pretty. yes “Some” success and not None as in Latin although could be with variable success as in a sine wave ?
Courty
What’s the reason for the prewarming of board? Sounds interesting, cheers - think I’ll attempt a diy version.
if you bring the board up to ~40c, the solder paste sticks to the board better and then the components stick to the paste better. win win. Any more than that and the paste starts to cure/harden.
If its chilly, I warm the paste syringe too. the paste flows much better at ~ body temperature.
Lastly, its worth giving the board a rub with isopropyl alcohol on a clean rag before starting paste/place too.
its just a case of trying to stack the odds in your favour. Whatever you do some of the components will a) disappear quicker than harry houdini, never to be seen again (this is inversely proportional to their size) or b) sit upright like a grave stone the moment you put them in the oven !
Courty
Made one - bought a cheap vacuum pipe, 18 gauge blunt needle and a foot air switch - came to about 40 quid and works even better than expected. Picks stuff out of tape no bother and releases instantly when foot switch pressed, probably about 3 times faster than I was with tweezers. 18 gauge picks up everything I need - mostly 0603 and the occasional soics and qfn’s. If working with anything smaller would probably need a smaller needle.
Placing 0603 -
The whole setup
Great idea - I’d never though of doing the placement like this, looks cool.
The solder dispenser unit has the ability to generate a background vacuum for retraction, i’m pretty sure it could be used for this as well… Set the unit for a high vacuum and a small positive pressure on press of the pedal and that should work. will give it a go…
Courty
