The Index Pick and Place Can Build Itself 

I really enjoyed this video. When I made my first CNC board in 1996, my little family was poor and I relied on free samples from National Semiconductor and there was no PCBWay, so I etched the boards myself. Now that I'm done tooting my own horn, I'll tell you the fun part. I constructed two boards, each with about 300 drill holes needed. Meaning, I needed to drill them myself. I put them into my milling machine and put up a printout of an excel table of hole locations and drilled them all. It took about three solid evenings of work. When I was done drilling the first board, an idea popped into my head. "what if I populate this board for XY axes and use it to help me drill the other board for Z-theta?" I raced down to the basement and soldered all the parts in. I programmed the microcontroller. After a few days, I was ready to hook it up to the motors on the mill. I laughed out loud like the guy in this video. I was alone in the garage when I yelled out loud. I saw my mill drawing a circle and that feeling of success in my gut made me cry out loud, "Its ALIVE!!!" I opened the door to the kitchen and yelled into the house, freaking out my wife. I'm sure the dog barked too. So I really enjoyed this video because I know that feeling of, "its working". I've built machinery for the last 25 years, and each time I have satisfaction, seeing my software and designs serving a purpose. All those machines are like my little mechanical children. But some of those children were harder to get working, some very challenging. I appreciate what I saw in this video! Nice work!

Congrats man, that is so awesome. I am sure this will make big waves in the maker community. Can't wait to see where this will lead.

Congratulations! A real affordable open source pick-and-place machine is one of those Holy Grail projects that's been on many a wish-list for a long time. It's a really good looking build, and we can't wait to see more of what it can do, a breakdown of the BOM, and how it compares in cost and performance to machines with similar capabilities. It's going to be a real game-changer for a lot of makers and maker spaces.

It's an absolutely amazing feeling when you bring a project to completion, and especially so if you're sharing it with the world. It's about the closest we males will come to giving birth to a child - it's the creation of a legacy, something that we hope goes on to greater things and eventually outlives us. Since everyone's piling on the kudos, I'll throw one into the mix. I was so interested in building an Index for my own projects (including a few I hope to go commercial with) when I first heard of the project that about nine months ago I began building a 3D printer from scratch. What I built rivals comparable sized commercial systems and it has all of the features enthusiasts demand, and it was built to eventually build an Index. I'm now in the fine-tuning stages with it and have already made functional prints, so this pick-and-place machine has already spawned the construction of other machines, and thus has the Index already started to grow a legacy. _Stephen, you've done something subversive and through it you've inspired others to do likewise._ There's no where to go but up, my friend - next stop, low orbit!

Congrats Stephen, That's a major accomplishment. It's really cool to see working end-to-end. Now that you've made a PNP machine, Maybe you can do an NPN? ;)

For paste application you want a blade the full width of the panel

Congratulations. I've been watching since the beginning and can't tell you how excited I was watching this. You have every reason to be a little emotional, pride is justified given the countless hours you've put into this project. Kudos.

To validate 0402's, why not just make it place a grid on sticky paper

This project has taught me so much apart from tech stuff. You are an inspiration and gave me hope to continue my work ethic. Thank you and congratulations. There is always hope in perseverance!

The AI overlords praise your efforts in the advancement of replicator technology.

Amazing and inspirational as always Mr. Hawes! Congratulations on your achievement!!! Great job!

Watching this thing go from basic concept to initial design to prototype to MVP has been amazing. I have been wanting to get into designing my own custom mechanical keyboard PCB, and this has given me the drive to go for it!

Big congrats Stephen :) It's been a long road and here we are! Nothing like the joy of a project truly paying it's worth for the first time. Here's to many more successes in the road to full production.

Your persistency is admiring, what an accomplishment! Congratulations with this insane result!

I feel like I'm watching a young prusa. Congrats bud.

My experience of applying solder paste is: Put on all the paste you got on the stencil. Then ONE stroke only, never stroke it again. Can't wait to get to know the price of the PnP. Congrats!

I’ve been watching since the first video. You have inspired me to start designing my own pcb and do more complex electronic projects. Thank you for your inspiration

Pick and place is a great idea. It's been around for decades. I worked at an IBM plant back in the early 1980s that had pick and place robots, wave soldering machines, and ovens for populating circuit boards. Congrats!

Congratulations, I have been following your project since day one and it makes me happy to see how time passed and see how your project progressed. Congratulations I start with my project

Congratulations, it has been great following your project! Can't wait to get my own

Congratulations! You've done well! Been following your journey since the start and your persistence and passion have remained solid all this time. Looking forward to seeing what the next years bring! Onward and upward!

Congrats Stephen! I've had a blast following along in this journey.

Very wholesome engineering, I love your project and I really like you as a human.

Wow, I'm really impressed! We had Siemens machines at a previous job that the guys in production were using and was always impressed. Especially the image recognition for proper part orientation which you mastered. Bravo!

Congratulations. What an awesome project, thanks for sharing!

Wow, even better than expected!

Congratulations buddy! Been watching your channel for a while and it's really awesome to see how far you've come. :)

not even a minute in the video, i hear your nervous laugh and i know that feels. Subscribed right away, only good things are coming from such laugh

Awesome work! Glad to see all your hardwork is paying off!

Congratulations on reaching this milestone.. Thank you for taking us for the ride..

For better or worse, consider an side job making infomercials. You have the absolute perfect voice for it.

Exciting Milestone! It has been a pleasure to watch this whole journey, keep up the great work!

Amazing work, Stephen - congratulations!! 🎉🥳

Such a great milestone! Congrats!

Well done Stephen! Very satisfying result!

Amazing to see this machine working and your joy seeing it finally work!

I have loved watching your progress. Congratulations on crossing the finish line. I already liked you but I like you more seeing you admit you are a mushy guy. Takes a real man to acknowledge that. Keep up the good work. BTW, I’m rooting for 0201’s. 😉

Excellent Stephen! Well done!! This has been a joy of a journey to watch. I'm super impressed and looking forward to building my own. I have a Neoden 4 at work that might help me build my first for home ;-) . Great Job!!!

It‘s absolutely inspiring to watch you build and test the PNP system. Continue with your amazing work and energy! 👍🏼

Very cool! Next up: building a clanking self-replicator!

That was so cool. Congratulations on such a big milestone

Major kudos on the progress you have made. I am guessing that all the people that have been having endless issues with the commercial PnP machines are keeping a VERY close eye on your masterpiece...

Great stuff Stephen and community. Must be a great feeling to be able to the first mobos thru. Well done.

For the manual application of paste, there’s numerous hand squeegees that will be perfect for this, you mainly just want to have the width be minimum the width of the panel, and even pressure is key (generally 5-8kg per 300mm)

Well done! I have been so inspired by your work, I designing my own for the fun of it. Thanks for the inspiration.

Congrats on reaching such a milestone!

Skynet is active! Great work Stephen! I think all of us that have followed this project is truly impressed over all work and problems being overcomed.

So excited for you! Congrats!!

Amazing job! Congratulations!

It's fun to watch you, you're always excited

Coooongrats! I will never imagine how happy you are. It's an achievement! talent, patience and a lot of skills. Greeeeat and awesome job Stephen! Your team is up to the job too!

Stencil printer I use is model ZB3040H. There may be more than one with the same part number- this one has a logo of letter B with a crosshatch to left of it. No connection to them, just a good product and so much better than the cheap one it replaced. I do down to 0402 and 0603 8 lead res arrays with it out of the box. Heavy and expensive shipping though.

Very, very COOL! Congratz!

Amazing. You've come a long way. You should be proud. Keep it up.

So awesome, congrats !

Congratulations ! Hope I finish my "more than a year" projects soon too ! 🍻

Such a fulfilling moment! Way to go

So exciting! Congratulations!

Super pumped. Nice work Stephen.

Those cable ties are making me itch

Love this idea, keep it going !

"Machines making Machines, How Perverse." - C-3P0

Excellent! After the MVP phase, it's time for rapids!

For solder past, I use a 6 Inch Body Filler Spreaders and a version of Seon's, Unexpected Maker, vacuum box to hold the stencil.

Fantastic! Well done. That's a whole lot of engineering.

Amazing work!

>make this machine and a 3d printer >make both replicate themselves as well as helping each other replicate parts they can't >profit

Congrats my man!!!

Just stumbled upon your video. Nice job! So inspiring

dewd congrats! you enthousiasm is great to see!

Congradulation m8. You guys have done an amazing job. Like really wonderful.

Congratulations, Stephen! Congrats to you all!

Best way I can think of applying solder paste: 3d print a tool. I had the following in mind. The main structure would look almost like a coffee mug. On handle you'd want a trigger. Using housed cable (like the ones for bicycle breaks) you could connect the trigger to a spring loaded door along one of the bottom edges, though I'd highly recommend the one opposite the handle. Ideally you'd want it to work like an upside-down drawbridge (so the edge that would be touching the bottom lifts towards you) with its pivots only a few mm up. Just enough for it to freely move. The tiny door would also need bounding edges, else the solder would just come out everywhere. Lastly you'd need a means to squeegee up the excess, I was thinking of just applying weather stripping to the bottom of the little door. Lastly you'd need a plunger... aka a piece of plastic that fit snug in the middle of the cup. Neside the door install a rubber wheel that can drive some threaded rod, though you may want to run it through a gear box&dif /have one set up on wither side. Then just tap and holes on the plunger, set it in place, and you're good. Also the door would make a nice lockout for the plunger driving mechanism, so it would only come out when the frigger is pressed and it's moving. Basically it's a coffee cup with trigger to pop open a flap along the bottom. Then a roller would slowly push out the solder with little to no excess, and any extra would be collected by the improvised squeegee 🤙

This was 2 years ago but jeez man .. congratulations are definitely in order even after all this time.

Awesome 🎉🎉🎉 Congrats! Picking 0402s is just sick 👍👍👍🙏🙏🙏

Congrats man! :) Time to have a 300 unit self-assembling farm of Index stuff like the Prusa factory lol

Thank you for sharing such genuine joy. legendary.

I'm building one of these one day. Incredible work.

Congratz! What an amazing accomplishment! 👏 The "ultimate" goal of ANY machine should be to "make parts for itself"! The "cycle of robot life" is on it's way to completion! Now that it can populate it's own motherboard, you need to give it some robot arms (AR3 Open Source Robot Arms) and program it to assemble all mechanical parts (frame, motor mounting, etc). Once you have two fully, self assembled, machines, it will be time incorporate artificial intelligence to officially kick off the Robot Apocalypse! 😃...🤖🌎💥👌😎👍

I put it in the re-flow master, also known as the hacked Hamilton toaster oven

Great job!

great work!

Bravo. This is beyond inspirational.

Can your PNP bed be a heater element similar to a 3D printer hot bed? AKA PNP, then reflow, then remove from machine.

I just came across your channel this is amazing! I'm about to become a maker / small scale manufacturer and I'm definitely going to be designing some electronics to make speakers and other things me I'm super interested in this product and I'll be a customer 100%

Congratulations!

First off that is freaking awesome! Great job. I was fixing to design one, you may have saved me a lot of time but, Do you know of an open source that can do 201 size resistors and capacitors (4mm tape)? the LumenPnP did not show 4mm as an option in the config tool. Also can you manually dial in a place to put component, like if you were only going to place one or two components doing rework?

That's a really cool machine. My brother has been wanting a pick and place machine for quite awhile.

That is absolutely amazing, wow!

Congrates man i have doubts you have used oven that we are using for hime cooking?

My dude, amazing work.

That is great! Keep it up!

I just binge watched this series. Wow, what a showcase of a broad spectrum of talents, from programming to component level design, communications protocols... This is awesome. But I'm surprised you aren't building more tape feeder modules for your own production. Is that because you don't have enough quantity yet, or just wanted to iterate on the motherboard? Anyway, this is such a cool project, and I'm glad to see someone come up with an affordable way to do this. I think making small-to-medium scale circuit board manufacturing more accessible will only feed forward and encourage more ingenuity in the electronics field. Good on you. Cheers.

Nice video clip, keep it up, thank you for sharing :)

thanks , very cool.

awesome man!

Started looking at some of your earlier videos! Stone of the parts like the z axis could be made with a CNC router no? What is you made parts that way you could make them out of aluminum for the more structural parts that require higher precision and rigidity

Absolutely phenomenal!

Hey Stephen.. I am very impressed.. I love to see your work...

The diodes spinning around is absolutely a 'feature' and not a bug. I expect to see at least one of them doing a full 360 spin on future projects. ;D