Desktop Pick and Place Brings SMT Line In-House

What happens when you have a problem, but the solution doesn’t exist? You make one! At least that is what Stephen Hawes has done with his radically open-source Desktop Pick and Place Machine. The LumenPnP is a machine that brings the benefits of a large scale manufacturer to a small scale company, entering into a new tier of production called mid-scale manufacturing. Let’s look at how we can put down the tweezers and spend time on more important things when demand is at your door.

 

Most devices made at any moderate scale use SMT (surface mount technology) components. If you have ever assembled a circuit board by hand, you have felt the frustration that comes with placing these components yourself. They can make a grain of rice look big in comparison, and it’s difficult to not miss the mark.
 
Hand-assembly has been one of the only options available for most people that are not able to spend the money to hire contract manufacturers with high-speed assembly equipment. If you were making a small batch of PCBAs, you could often justify doing them all by hand. But let’s say you need to make 1,000 of these. Looking to hire a factory is likely only a cost-effective option if ordered in quantities that are far beyond what you need. And with Covid-19 showing us what can happen when global commerce is disrupted, even these services are not as reliable as they once were. The gap between hand assembly and hiring a manufacturer is what we call Mid-Scale Manufacturing.
 
With 3D printing, we have seen how a technology that was not accessible to the masses has been turned into something that is accessible enough to be used at home. This begs the question of what other machines can be manufactured in a way that would allow anyone to scale their production at the pace they need, without having to lose all of the profits just because you have hit a certain threshold of orders coming in and can’t handle all of them by hand.
 
Opulo is looking to bring the 3D printing desktop experience to the Pick and Place world with the LumenPnP, a radically open-source desktop Pick and Place machine. This device allows your manufacturing to scale with your company's growth and is able to help you bridge the gap from hand-placing to hiring a contract manufacturer. The recent awareness of this project as it was being designed has led to a thriving community of folks who contribute ideas and improvements back into the project, all because it is open source.

A lot of the community saw this as a great solution for hobbyists but had been eagerly awaiting feeders for the machine. After extensive testing and a public beta, Opulo has released their open-source, powered feeders to the community. Feeders are available for sale now.