Many automated machine instruments function in comparable methods and might share management boards. At their coronary heart, all of them comply with CNC (pc numerical management) ideas. Which means that CNC mills, laser cutters, 3D printers, pen plotters, and plenty of extra machines include {hardware} that’s largely interchangeable. However some machine instruments have distinct wants and might profit from devoted controllers. 3D printers, for instance, profit from elements for measuring and controlling temperature — elements which are pointless for a pen plotter. Following that logic, Thea (Stargirl) Flowers created an RP2040-based management board known as Starfish tailor-made to pick-and-place machines.
Flowers owns an organization known as Winterbloom that builds and sells synthesizers. That work requires the meeting of many PCBs, which implies that she has to put quite a bit of small elements. That’s troublesome and time-consuming to do by hand, which is the place the pick-and-place (PnP) machine is available in. PnP machines, together with the Opulo LumenPnP that Flowers owns, mechanically choose digital elements (like resistors, capacitors, microcontrollers, and plenty of extra) from a reel after which place them onto the proper location on a PCB. One has to program the areas, however after doing to allow them to sit again whereas a robotic assembles their PCBs for them. That saves quite a lot of effort and time when constructing many equivalent PCBs.
PnP machines look and function quite a bit like pen plotters, as a result of the top effector strikes in two axes and experiences little or no resistance. However these machines seize elements utilizing vacuum, which advantages from particular {hardware}. They’ll additionally management the feed of the reels holding the elements — although it’s doable to get round that. Many PnP machines use repurposed management boards meant for different machines, like 3D printers. However that may be a clumsy strategy and Starfish is far more elegant.
Starfish makes use of a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller (the identical as discovered on the Pico improvement board), which is highly effective and reasonably priced. It controls as much as three stepper motors (one for the X axis, two for the Y axis) by way of Trinamic TMC2209 silent drivers. MOSFETs management energy to 2 vacuum pumps and drivers actuate two pneumatic solenoid valves. Starfish additionally contains two vacuum sensors, that are very helpful for making certain dependable operation. Lastly, Starfish can drive RGB LEDs, talk with feeders by way of RS485, and contains I2C connections for growth.
Flowers designed Starfish to be used with a LumenPnP machine, nevertheless it ought to work effectively with many different fashions and DIY builds. Starfish is open supply, so anybody can seize the PCB design recordsdata, have them fabricated, after which put collectively this management board. As a bonus, the board appears to be like stunning.
