I've been away in Munich working on many things including assembly of PCBs. This was perfect as I had to assemble new boards for M-Bot.
I've re-made the CNC controller board in order to correct a few mistakes I made the last time, also I designed the controller board around an ESP32.
Here you see me reflowing manually some components. I don't have any fancy infrared reflowing oven, but I made it work regardless.
Also, these are big components 1206, which is 1.2mm long and 0.6mm wide. That may seem tiny, but in comparison with 0603 which are half the size, a quarter of the area and a eighth of the volume, these are big boys !
I didn't get a stencil for my boards and used a big syringe, and I wouldn't want to do this with components smaller than 0805, and while the cost of a stencil isn't huge, I don't think it's very necessary to assemble 30 components.
There are two ways to automate the assembly of PCB.
The first option is something I've used for my other project, as assembling 3000 components (over 10 boards) is not fun for long. Though it takes a lot of planning to ensure that you operate within the manufacturer's capabilities.
I'm looking at the second option as this is something I would love to set up in my own capabilities. Being able to assemble small amounts of boards and creating a JIT (Just In Time) manufacturing process to manufacture boards on demand at a smaller cost than contract manufacturers in Europe can do, but more rapidly than importing from Asia.
There is this Lumen PNP project which is relatively new, launched only a few months ago; I think it has some good potential to compete on the low scale. I am thinking of setting this up, though I would still need some PCB to populate, i.e. a reason to do so, maybe my solar clock is something I can make with ?