New Pick and Place machine arrives at Castle

[Pdelcast]

New machine is being installed in our Kansas facility as I type this --

Universal Instruments GC-120 Genesis
Quad Lightning head (30 placement spindles per head)
Linear VRM motor drive (no screw drive)
132,000 parts per hour placement maximum

[BrianG]

ooooh, machine porn!

It's a better reason than ever to take a couple-hour road trip for a little tour...

[johnrobholmes]

you KNOW I can't wait for production to start again!!!


Gonna have parts flying everywhere! It will sound like a Gatling gun!

[GT35R]

Good time to make a bigger v4 MMM with no fan.. oh and a higher BEC output.. and waterproof

[Metallover]

Will this lower the prices on your products at all? Before or after you pay off that machine? I'm no expert on fancy machines but it looks like that costs a lot more then a nice angus steer; and there's no question which I'd rather have.

[Pdelcast]

Originally Posted by Metallover

Will this lower the prices on your products at all? Before or after you pay off that machine? I'm no expert on fancy machines but it looks like that costs a lot more then a nice angus steer; and there's no question which I'd rather have.

How much does an Angus steer cost?

[Metallover]

Originally Posted by Pdelcast

How much does an Angus steer cost?

You could probably get one for around $1000. If you just want to cheap cow to show off to the guys at the CC shop, you could probably get one for under $500; However, its angus FTW!

[Pdelcast]

Originally Posted by Metallover

You could probably get one for around $1000. If you just want to cheap cow to show off to the guys at the CC shop, you could probably get one for under $500; However, its angus FTW!

Well then, that machine cost about as much as 350 angus cows (not the cheap ones... )

[johnrobholmes]

dang, thats not bad. I was figuring you dropped closer to 1/2 or 3/4 mil.


Can it pick and place the meat on my sandwich?

[mistercrash]

Originally Posted by Metallover

Will this lower the prices on your products at all?

Lower cost is nice but not always the ultimate goal. I don't know much about running a business but when investing in new machinery that increases production and gives a higher quality product, the consumer benefits from it even if the price stays the same. The company can benefit from higher profits which can be reinvested in more high end machinery to produce even higher quality products still at the same price. Or invest more into R&D to come up with better, more powerful products (with no fans and better switches ) for the consumer still at the same price. Anyway, thanks for showing us the progress, I worked in factories for 20 years and I like this kind of stuff.

[snellemin]

That is such a naughty pic, it being all open and stuff.

[TexasSP]

So the linear drive probably increases speed and accuracy quite a bit over a screw drive? I am sure there is some kind of high resolution encoder detecting position?

That's a nice machine, I can imagine the excitement right now in the shop!

[Pdelcast]

Originally Posted by TexasSP

So the linear drive probably increases speed and accuracy quite a bit over a screw drive? I am sure there is some kind of high resolution encoder detecting position?

That's a nice machine, I can imagine the excitement right now in the shop!

Yeah, the encoder is a 1 micron resolution laser linear encoder -- you can just make it out in the picture -- the rule for the encoder is a 24K gold strip just under the head assembly on the linear slide. It's exposed so that it can be easily cleaned.

The main advantage of the linear motor is lower part count, lighter weight, and faster response. The head can accelerate at 9Gs at full speed, and still reach a 3 sigma placement accuracy of 10 microns.

Note that the heads on this machine are located on the INSIDE of the gantry -- not on the outside. Our old machine had the head mounted on the outside of the gantry. That's why it looks like there are no heads mounted on the gantries. (The gantries are built generic, so that they can be mounted on the outside for single beam models, and on the inside for dual beam models.) This machine operates on two circuit boards at one time, each board has two heads building (one picking and one placing) at any time.

Dadx2: This is a circuit board assembly robot. There are four machines in our production line -- the first is a stencil printer (DEK Horizon 03i) which prints the solder paste (microscopic solder balls suspended in a sticky flux) onto the circuit board (kind of like stencil printing a T-shirt.) The second machine is our new machine (Universal GC-120), which is called a "chip shooter" -- it takes parts from long tape reels and places the parts on the circuit board. The third machine in our line is a "flexible/fine pitch" placer, which we mostly use for large, odd shaped components and for placing microprocessors. The last machine is the reflow oven (Heller 1707EXL), which solders all the parts in one operation -- it's like a giant (20' long) pizza oven with 1 degree C accuracy and 7 temperature zones (to slowly raise the board temperature, and slowly cool it to prevent chip damage.)

I'll post a little video of it once it's running. So far today they have installed the machine, run electric and air to the machine, leveled the machine (1 thousandth of a inch front to back) and calibrated the gantries. We should be back up and running tomorrow afternoon.

[Snipin_Willy]

Originally Posted by TexasSP

So the linear drive probably increases speed and accuracy quite a bit over a screw drive? I am sure there is some kind of high resolution encoder detecting position?

That's a nice machine, I can imagine the excitement right now in the shop!

From my limited knowledge of machines that's exactly what linear drives are, much faster and very accurate.

[Dadx2mj]

Pardon my ignorance but what exactly does this machine do?