06 NOVEMBER 2017 Pick and Place Software Version 2-2 Update Another software update to the Pick and Place Controller Software for the DIY pick and place machine. Since the UI redesign earlier this year I have now changed the vision system to use AForge.NET to read from the USB...

21 JUNE 2017 Pick and Place Software 2017 Since writing the ModernUI Pick and Place Controller Software for the DIY pick and place machine in 2014 we have been planning to update the software and add some new features to improve productivity when using the Pick...

19 MAY 2015 DIY Pick and Place Speed Updates Since adding the various modifications to the DIY pick and place machine in the past few months we have now been able to tweak the speed and acceleration of the stepper drivers to improve the machines placement times. We...

12 OCTOBER 2014 SMC Vacuum and Air Valve Upgrade In July 2014 we modified the vacuum valves to try to improve the air flow to the picker nozzles by drilling the aperture to a larger diameter. This initially worked but the valve seat wasn’t making a very good seal...

10 AUGUST 2014 ModernUI Pick and Place Controller Software I have finished the latest version of the DIY Pick and Place controller software to work with the new KFlop motion controller and our latest custom USB controller board. I decided to build this application using the ModernUI...

09 JULY 2014 Vacuum Valve air flow modification The DIY Pick and Place machine upgrade to use automotive vacuum valves didn’t work as planned as the automotive valves are much too slow and unresponsive to switch the vacuum feed to the picker needles fast enough...

09 JULY 2014 Pick and Place Controller V3 Part 2 Following from the previous Pick and Place Controller V3 Part 1 post we have now built and installed the new control board for the pick and place machine. While building and testing the board we found an issue with one...

24 JUNE 2014 DIY Pick and Place Design Files We have collated all the design files we saved during the development and build of our DIY manual pick and place machine and the DIY automatic pick and place machine and we have uploaded the files to our GitHub account...

12 JUNE 2014 Pick and Place Controller V3 Part 1 Since we built the automatic DIY pick and place machine, one aspect of the build which has always caused us problems is the speed in which Mach3 communicates with the SmoothStepper Ethernet board and the lack of ability...