May 31, 2024
Description
This is a flexible mounting system for pcbs/panels onto the LumenPnP pick&place machine. It's composed of a base mounting plate with fixed brackets for one pcb corner plus movable support sliders for the remaining pcb edges.
A grid arrangement of dovetails on the mounting plate allows to insert the sliders and align them to support different pcb sizes.
The mounting plate mates the LumenPnP staging plate hole pattern for mounting as well as through holes for leaving out existing mounting screws of the components underneath the staging plate.
The sliders come in two sizes. The narrow one runs on a single row of dovetails while the wider one covers two rows which gives even better friction. A flexible lid on the sliders is pushed against the pcb and helps with tightly fixing the pcb. The dovetail section is not solid but rather composed of thinner walls which reduces wear while maintaining a more constant friction and also compensates for print tolerances to some extent.
Both the mounting plate as well as the sliders can be printed without any supports needed. I used Overture PLA+ professional since this is a bit less rigid than normal PLA and hence allows for a tight fit of the sliders running over the dovetails while still maintaining a certain friction to keep the sliders in place. However, it could also be printed with normal PLA as well as PETG.
I increased the perimeters to 4 to make the dovetails most robust on both the base plate and the sliders. Printed with a 0.4mm nozzle and 0.15mm layer height.
The dovetails are a lot of small structures close to each other which might lead to some stringing if the filament is not properly dried or retraction settings are not tuned well. I printed this on both a Prusa MK3S+ and Mini+ with generic PLA settings without issues.
I made two sizes of the base mounting plate, which both cover the full height of 120mm of a staging plate but have different width.
Other than mounting the base plate onto a staging plate of the LumenPnP there is not much to assemble. Use M3 countersunk screws which completely flush with the surface of the base plate.
Make sure to leave some space to the right of the base plate for inserting the sliders.
I would recommend to remove the sliders when not used for a while since PLA is a bit prone to permanent deforming when a constant force is applied.
Let me know if you think additional sizes of the base mounting plates would make sense and I can easily add them here.
License:
Creative Commons — Attribution
8
ERIK3DP
