Pick and Place machine

A pick and place machine can pick up electronic components and place them in the right place on the PCB to be assembled. Perhaps it can also extrude solder paste if a stencil is not used. So far, so similar to a 3D Printer or Pen Plotter.

For prototyping one-off board designs, the setup cost for commercial assembly (PCBA) tends to be too high to be worth it, and I don't want to hand solder hundreds of identical tiny LEDs.

So I'd like to use the OpenPnP software and as many bits from previous projects to build a machine capable of assembling the LED boards for my Bottleship project. My LED matrix prototypes tend do use a large number of the same component, which should make setting up the machine a bit more manageable, as only one or two feeders are required.

There are many hobbyist and commercial solutions and some open source machine builds and parts list I'm using for inspiration, but as I'd like to re-use as many old parts as I can I'll be attempting to design my own parts, probably using SolveSpace again.

Desired parameters

Progress

May, 2026

Partially rebuilt the frame with a moving X motor and dual Y motors instead of the initial CoreXY setup, as the crossing belts made it difficult to find space for mounting feeders at the front and consistent belt tension was difficult to maintain. Added a work surface mounted to the 2020 extrusion, just an MDF sheet so far that should be replaced with a magnetic surface eventually. Wired everything up to an old 3D printer control board (BTT SKR mini) and configured the Marlin firmware. Adding a mounting point for the up-looking camera, and holders, diffusers, and wiring for short LED strips around both cameras.

Started working through the OpenPNP setup. On a Mac, a patch is currently needed for the program to be able to access USB cameras, and it only runs with an older Java version (brew install openjdk@11; JAVA_HOME=/opt/homebrew/Cellar/openjdk@11/11.0.31/ ./openpnp.sh). I also recreated the calibration pattern (pdf) shown in the YouTube video example as the original link was no longer available.

April, 2026

The NEMA 8 SMT head I had ordered for £35 arrived; it includes a chuck for the JUKI nozzle and an adapter for the vacuum tube on top of the hollow shaft motor. Those motors by themselves were difficult to find for significantly cheaper and I like the idea of a brass mount for the nozzle rather than 3D printing that part.

I also designed a mount for a lead screw driven linear motion stage with a small stepper motor, and a 3ml Syringe with a Luer lock replaceable nozzle. This will probably not be precise enough for dispensing solder paste by direct writing but easier to prototype than more advanced methods.

I mounted both of those parts to 100mm MGN9 rails with the carriages attached to the X carriage that already holds the downward facing camera, and added a mount for the Z motor as well.

March, 2026

Added motor and idler mounts for a Core XY motion system to the frame. This is not ideal as the belt run gets in the way of where I might later want to mount the component feeders, and it puts a lot of stress on the 3D printed parts to maintain belt tension.

Made a camera mount for the downwards facing camera and checked that it has a sensible field of view although I haven't exactly decided on working height yet.

February, 2026

Built a rectangular frame from the 2020 aluminium extrusions left over from my first 3D Printer (a HyperCube Evolution, since replaced with a BambuLab A1 mini). I created some adapters to mount MGN7 and MGN9 linear rails from an unfinished pen plotter project to the extrusions.

January, 2026

Initial plans and requirements. Ordered a cheap USB camera with 42 degree field of view. It doesn't immediately work in OpenPNP on macOS, which may be a permissions issue.

The driver board would need at least 5 stepper drivers (X, Y, Z, N1, N2) if using a single motor to control the Z height of both heads. It would also need to control a vacuum pump and four solenoids in the layout inspired by the OpenPnP Openbuilds design