Hi Gene, The selective soldering machine I droll over is the KISS range by Ace Production.http://www.ace-protech.com/product/kiss-100/
The have the solder bath on an X/Y axis that moves around under the board. The Z axis is lifted on 4 screw jacks. When they first started the guys were asking question about the best way to lift the Z-axis on the DIYCNC and Mach3 yahoo groups. The system is controlled by Mach3. I don't know if they still do. They have quite a lot of good videos showing the process and capability. http://www.ace-protech.com/video-library/ It is a really good example of a startup company doing things right. I wish I'd considered buying one of their machines when they first started up. Cheers, Peter On 10/05/2015 1:21 PM, Gene Heskett wrote: > On Saturday 09 May 2015 22:39:24 Peter Homann wrote: >> Hi Gene, >> >> Yeah, it is does not always do a great job. It takes a lot of fiddling >> to get everything correct. I'm still not entirely happy with the >> results. > > And while I am obviously a fan of LinuxCNC, thats not saying there aren't > other solutions if you are more familiar with Mach3. To quote a very > old saw, you went to the races and ran what you brung. :) > >> As far as I can tell the best selective soldering machines use a >> solder fountain. > > That I am not at all familiar with. > >> As to Mach3, I used it as that's what I'm most familiar with. I did a >> great job of controlling the 3 axis gantry and I wanted to do is as >> quickly as possible. Controlling the soldering head module was a bit >> more problematic. In the end I used the G82 drill cycle (with a dwell) >> and had the Mach3 macropump cancel the dwell when it received the >> soldering cycle finished signal from the soldering head controller. > > How is that determined? Perhaps by the amount of solder that has fed > once it has touched the work and stopped till some melts? A smaller > fixed amount, perhaps with a second or so longer dwell before the iron > is withdrawn to allow better penetration into the gap between pin and > plated thru hole? However I'd have no clue how to go about determining > that exactly .075" of solder has been melted. Solving that by something > other than elapsed dwell time would seem to be something that needed a > good solution. >> >> The reason for using a drill cycle was that I wanted to use the >> excellon drill file from the PCB CAD software as the starting point. I >> used Sheetcam to convert it to Gcode and went from there. > > Sounds perfectly reasonable. pcb2gcode does a similar file I can drive my > mill with. All my comments are based on having a hot soldering iron in > one hand since I was about 14 years old. And I had to learn the > military way in '60 when I got hired on as a field checkout tech while > building some of the first Titan ICBM's. They don't like solder, > claiming if a wire wrapped around a turret post was more than 50% > covered, that made it too hard to grab the end and unwind it, cold. > > Fluxes have come a long ways too since those days, unfortunately the > hands are not as steady as they once were. > > So its safe to say that I am not the man I once was, even once. :) > >> Cheers, >> >> Peter >> >> On 10/05/2015 12:48 AM, Gene Heskett wrote: >>> On Saturday 09 May 2015 05:43:10 Peter Homann wrote: >>>> Hi, >>>> >>>> This is the soldering robot I have. It is based on a general >>>> purpose robot, mainly used for applying glues, pastes etc. Mine has >>>> a soldering head on it. >>>> http://homanndesigns.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&; >>>> id= 53:selective-soldering-machine-mach3-&catid=35:smt&Itemid=55 >>>> >>>> I year or so ago I converted it to run under Mach3 as the original >>>> interface was such a pain, as it only had a teach mode. The >>>> conversion is detailed here. >>>> http://homanndesigns.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&; >>>> id= >>>> 55:selective-soldering-robot-conversion-to-mach3&catid=34:cnc-proje >>>> cts& Itemid=55 >>>> http://homanndesigns.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&; >>>> id= >>>> 65:selective-soldering-robot-conversion-to-mach3-and-smooth-stepper >>>> -par t-2&catid=34:cnc-projects&Itemid=55 >>>> http://homanndesigns.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&; >>>> id= >>>> 66:selective-soldering-robot-conversion-to-mach3-and-smooth-stepper >>>> -par t-3&catid=34:cnc-projects&Itemid=55 >>>> >>>> Cheers, >>>> >>>> Peter >>> >>> Peter, thanks for sharing. I'd imagine that once programmed, that >>> thing can do the board pictured in perhaps 10 minutes a board. A bit >>> too much solder according to mill specs, but still Sweet! But why >>> Mach3? >>> >>>> On 9/05/2015 1:18 PM, Jon Elson wrote: >>>>> On 05/08/2015 11:16 AM, Marcus Bowman wrote: >>>>>> On 8 May 2015, at 16:46, Jon Elson wrote: >>>>>>> Not bad! I have some ideas for making a soldering robot, >>>>>>> this could be a good XY base for that. >>>>>> >>>>>> I saw this as a result of a link in an earlier email from this >>>>>> group. a couple of days ago. >>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9pd9sY0Tjg >>>>>> >>>>>> You are right - this is a useful looking keenly priced base. >>>>> >>>>> I actually did this on my milling machine, as a test. >>>>> Results were not perfect, but showed the technology was at >>>>> least potentially workable. I have since redone the thing >>>>> to use thicker solder wire, I bet it would work even better, >>>>> but have not set it up to try again. >>>>> >>>>> Jon >>>>> >>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------ >>>>> -- ---------- One dashboard for servers and applications across >>>>> Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support >>>>> with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that >>>>> give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction >>>>> tracing using APM Insight. >>>>> http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> Emc-users mailing list >>>>> [email protected] >>>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users >>>> >>>> --- >>>> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus >>>> software. http://www.avast.com >>>> >>>> >>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>> --- -------- One dashboard for servers and applications across >>>> Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support >>>> with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that >>>> give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction >>>> tracing using APM Insight. >>>> http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Emc-users mailing list >>>> [email protected] >>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users >>> >>> Cheers, Gene Heskett >> >> --- >> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. >> http://www.avast.com >> >> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> -------- One dashboard for servers and applications across >> Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with >> 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you >> Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing >> using APM Insight. >> http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y >> _______________________________________________ >> Emc-users mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > > Cheers, Gene Heskett > --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
