Soldering pin headers by hand is a tedious process, particularly when your mission has an enormous variety of them. [iforce2d] has numerous boards with numerous headers, and has created a slightly particular CNC machine to to do the job. It’s a soldering robotic, managed by LinuxCNC and you may see it beneath the break.
Superficially it resembles a 3D printer made in aluminium, with an X-Y movable desk and a Z-direction represented by a soldering iron and solder feeder on an arm. The solder feeder makes use of a Bowden tube, with a 3D-printer extruder motor pushing the solder wire down a PTFE tube and eventually right into a wonderful aluminium tube from which it’s fed to the iron tip.
Although he’s carried out a ravishing job of it, creating the machine will not be all that’s required, as a result of the instrument path requires extra consideration than merely transferring the iron to every pin and supplying some solder. There’s a necessity to contemplate the impact of that warmth, how a lot every pad wants, and the way a lot neighbouring pads contribute.
We’ve had repetitive soldering duties similar to this one although not on this scale, so we will perceive the tedium this machine will relieve. We will’t nevertheless assist being reminded of XKCD 1319.