On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 9:31 AM, Mark Lerman <
mlerman@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> The next thing would be to mount a camera on the drill so that you
> could position the drill properly in the center of the pad. I seem to
> remember someone doing that with software that sees the exact center
> and helps you position correctly. Perhaps a mechanical stage. Of
> course we're almost at cnc by then, but I think an optical aid would be
> useful.
>
> Mark
>
>
A camera system would be nice. Both for board drilling and possibly
parts mounting.
The really fancy systems (manual assist BGA pick and place) (and WAY more
effort then it's worth for simply drilling pcb holes) use an optical beam
splitter that slides in from the side between the target and the tool/part
that need centering.
The beam splitter looks BOTH up and down simultaneously, and a camera
combines both images to help align tool and target perfectly. The optics
then slide out of the way, and the tool does the z stroke.
Now, if you could come up with a poor man's version using a couple of
cmos webcam sensors, then maybe you would have a design worth pursuing.
Maybe a high frame rate camera and a fast spinning mirror. Use software to
pull out the properly referenced images you need, and combine. Before that
point I think I'd just go CNC.
--
carl
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Henry Carl Ott N2RVQ
hcarlott@...[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]