Visual Soldering Robot

[cmantunes]

I just stambled on the Visual Soldering Robot available at Robotdigg and got intrigued, especially given the price. Any thoughts, good or bad?

[ataradov]

Looks like a piece of garbage. And

On the price: Why we can make this machine with such a low price
1. Because of the 3D printer bonus. A lot of procurement reduces the cost
2. Historical reasons. Developers use ferrochromium for decades and have feelings.
3.DIY appearance. At present the product has not been installed shell. Install the shell will be a big price increase (10000 + ha ha, believe it or not).

Developers have feelings too

And in their demo video it makes some horribly dry joints.

[ar__systems]

Looks good to me. I actually wanted to build something like that.

[mariush]

I'm still waiting for someone to create one of these babies for less than a couple thousand dollars:





Well, something lightweight as in no need for two laser beams, could get rid of different laser shapes / patterns , less features .. something more one the amateur side (could be something as simple as going over pre-applied paste and heat it up)

Feels to me like it's just a matter of changing a laser engraver to use a different laser along with a very good (fast) temperature sensor to measure how hot the metal becomes and not burn up all the flux in a ms.

[thm_w]

Very cool, the learning mode means it would be simple to program in the pin locations and solder quantity.
I'm not sure how the hot air part is supposed to work, and populating the through hole parts would be time consuming.

[richardlawson1489]

This looks good to me. I am interesting to use it for my future project.

[Reckless]

I'm thinking to buy 4 axis model.  Does anyone have any experience?

[Reckless]

I just stambled on the Visual Soldering Robot available at Robotdigg and got intrigued, especially given the price. Any thoughts, good or bad?

All I can say is dont buy from robotdigg!  They raise prices even after you place an order with them.  I didn't find them to be honest and fair.

[jmelson]

Looks good to me. I actually wanted to build something like that.

I actually built a stripped-down version.  It used an ordinary Weller iron in a spring-mounted holder that fit on the spindle of my milling machine, and used the X-Y-Z axes of the machine to move the iron.  I built a solder feeder with a DC gearhead motor.  The one thing it was missing was a rotation of the iron/solder feed, but that actually was not a big deal for the boards I was thinking of using it for.  It did NOT work very well.  I think one problem was I used too small a diameter solder.  Since then, I rebuilt it to use a larger diameter solder, but have not set it up and tried again.

The major problem was if the solder fails to wet to the tip and connector pin, then it just curls around and will never correct itself without manual intervention.  So, the solder wire just keeps paying out of the tube but doesn't wet to the next joint.  If it just skipped one joint but then recovered, that would not be such a bad problem.

Jon

[ar__systems]

Yeah, since then I reconsidered this approach. Selective wave soldering is way better. Not only for the soldering robot you need to create some kind of a holder to keep the parts from falling out, the quality of the selective wave join is miles ahead of the solder iron joint.

[Reckless]

What selective solder system do you use?  Is there a way to do it on a budget?

[ar__systems]

Don't do it yet

[IconicPCB]

Wenesco out of Chicago make solder pots with wave nozzles ( solderpot suitable for integration into a selective soldering machine ) .
A simple mechanical staging frame with a manual switch operation would be a low cost of doing it.

Otherwise a second hand machine may be the shot.

[Reckless]

Thanks, they are 15 mins away from me.

[nisma]

Do you have the possibility to post a picture from the solder feed guide including the solder tip. The problem you describe sound strange even if you don't perforate the solder core for avoiding splashing of flux.

[exe]

Looks interesting. I wonder what is the use case for this device. Why not pick&place and reflow?