Making Parts Feeders Work Where They Weren’t Supposed To
1 min read
Summary
Chris Cecil, an engineering director at robotics company Robosprout, found himself in need of a more accessible and affordable way to increase the number of components he could feed into his pick-and-place machine for circuit board assembly.
Rather than pay $32,000 to the original manufacturer for more feeders, he turned to the open-source community and found SchultzController, a piece of software that allows Siemens Siplace feeders to be used with pick-and-place machines, and adapted it to work with his Manncorp/Autotronik MC384V2 machine.
Cecil documented his process and published it on Robosprout’s website, and in addition to the cost savings, he also increased the number of components he could feed into his machine from eight to 16.
The open-source nature of the project also means it can be built on and improved in the future.
