An RP2040 Powered Pick And Place

November 7, 2022 by Matthew Carlson 15 Comments

Pick and place machines are a wonder to behold, as they delicately and accurately place part after part. Unfortunately, they have to have a similarly wondrous price tag. Luckily, they aren’t too difficult to make yourself as they share many properties of a 3D printer with some extra constraints. [Stargirl Flowers] released Starfish, an open-source pick-and-place control board based around an RP2040 to help people make their own.

She purchased a LumenPnP, and the itch to tinker became too much to ignore. The STM32 on the stock controller also happened to get fried, leaving an obvious opening to create a custom board. [Stargirl] chose Trinamic TMC2209 motor controllers to drive the three stepper motors. The power circuit is impressively overbuilt with a 3A fuse, a TVS diode for shunting voltage spikes, a P-channel MOSFET for reverse polarity protection, a low-pass filter for AC ripple, and a large 100μF capacitor.

The RP2040 is a good choice since it’s easy to get and has plenty of digital I/O. USB connects the board to the outside work and includes ESD TVS diodes to protect the board when connecting and disconnecting the USB port. Motors for vacuums are controlled by a 74HC2G34 buffer that drives enable lines to two MOSFETs. Solenoids are similar but with a high current peak and a much smaller current to keep them open. The DRV120 fits the bill as it is a single-channel relay with current regulation. I2C vacuum sensors are the same ones on the Lumen motherboard; they just required an I2C multiplexer.

It’s an extremely well-documented project explaining why each part was chosen and why. If you want to create an RP2040 project that needs to last, we consider this a guiding star. It’s all up on GitHub for you to take a look at.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen RP2040 as part of a motor controller, and we suspect we’ll see more.

Vintage Headphones Bluetooth Conversion Goes The Extra Mile

July 9, 2018 by Ben James 2 Comments

[KaZjjW] wanted to retrofit a pair of nicely styled vintage headphones to be able to play wirelessly over Bluetooth. In principle this is an easy task: simply stick a Bluetooth audio receiver on the line-in, add a battery, and you’re all set. However, [KaZjjW] wanted to keep the aesthetic changes to the headphones at an absolute minimum, retaining the existing casing and volume control, whilst cramming the electronics entirely inside and out of sight.

With the inherent space constraints inside the cups of the headphones, this proved to be quite a challenge. The existing volume potentiometer which hung half outside the case was remounted on an ingenious hinge made of two PCBs, with the pot floating next to a surface mounted switch. This allowed it to not only control the volume, but also act as an on/off switch for the Bluetooth. The only other existing cuts in the casing were a circular hole for the audio cable, and a slit for the cable strain relief. These worked perfectly for an LED status indicator and micro-USB battery charging.

The main chip used for receiving audio over Bluetooth was the BM62 by Microchip. It’s a great all-in-one solution for this kind of project as it has built-in battery charging, an on-board DAC and audio amp, as well as a serial control interface. In part 2 of the project log, the process of programming the BM62 was documented, and it was painful – it’s a shame that the software support lets it down. But a hacker will always find a way, and we’ve seen some pretty neat hacks for reprogramming existing chips in off-the-shelf Bluetooth headphones.

Two PCBs for the pot button hinge, one for the LED and micro-USB connector, as well as one for the Bluetooth receiver and a PIC. That’s four PCBs in a pretty small space, enabled by some commendable design effort both electronically and mechanically. It certainly paid off, as the finished product looks very slick.

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Tools Of The Trade – Component Placing

May 10, 2016 by Bob Baddeley 34 Comments

Recently we started a series on the components used to assemble a circuit board. The first issue was on dispensing solder paste. Moving down the assembly line, with the paste already on the board, the next step is getting the components onto the PCB. We’re just going to address SMT components in this issue, because the through hole assembly doesn’t take place until after the SMT components have gone through the process to affix them to the board.

SMT components will come in reels. These reels are paper or plastic with a clear plastic strip on top, and a reel typically has a few thousand components on it. Economies of scale really kick in with reels, especially passives. If you order SMT resistors in quantities of 1-10, they’re usually $.10 each. If you order a reel of 5000, it’s usually about $5 for the reel. It is cheaper to purchase a reel of 10 kOhm 0603 resistors and never have to order them again in your life than it is to order a few at a time. Plus the reel can be used on many pick-and-place machines, but the cut tape is often too short to use in automated processes.

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CNC Solder Paste/pick N Place

June 4, 2007 by Will O'Brien 15 Comments

Just when I thought I’d seen most of the CNC mods out there, [Steve Ciciora] (who happens to be one of the driving forces behind the killacycle) sent in his diy solder paste dispenser *and* his diy pick and place machine. Both are extensions of his CNC taig mill. Hopefully [steve] will put up some more details of his mill mods.