Print your own PC board with SM Reflowing? Wow

Kerry S

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/voltera/voltera-your-circuit-board-prototyping-machine

"Print your circuit boards, dispense solder paste, and reflow! The Voltera V-One lets you go from concept to creation in minutes."

I would love to have one of these! Unfortunately the lead time is next year. Only does 2 layer boards, at the moment, but I don't see why it could not do multilayer boards with large area printing of the non-conductive layers as well as having a head that does PCB drilling for thru-hole parts.

PCB prototyping is going to get really exciting over the next few years as this type of thing takes off.

This with that Altera Max 10 chip sets would make for some interesting P1V board variants!

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

One of the first PCB assembly companies I used was a guy working from his basement. In lieu of using stencils, he employed a CNC solder paste dispenser. ¡Ay caramba! What a disaster that thing was! Both positional and deposit volume accuracy suffered and, as a result, voids and bridges were all too common. He finally gave up and started using stencils, with a marked improvement in quality.

I hope these guys can make a go of it. I might even buy one once they're in production. But I've got to see something better than what my former supplier used before I'm convinced.

-Phil

WBA Consulting

Very interesting and shows promise for where PCB prototyping should be in the next few years. However, what caught my eye is the magnetic snap-in cartridges. One risk with that slick concept is loss of accuracy over time as parts wear since the dispensing tip alignment is dependent on the cartridge installation. Other than that, I really hope it does well and ends up being a proven method for simple prototypes. I am also curious as to how the conductive ink "pads" will work in regards to flatness.

Kerry S

If he was having positional errors he either had a really bad CNC setup or, more likely, did not have a good jig setup for accurately positioning boards each time. That or he did not use a proper position encoder with index pulse so the machine would home out exactly every time. My Haas or Robodrill mills will repeat to my part fixtures every time to better than +/- 0.001... but then they are real CNC machines and not some small home built setup.

The solder paste dispensing would be tricky, any change in paste consistency and you would over/under deposit. Same would be true with the conductive ink. Fine traces might be an issue as well as any surface contaminant that would prevent it from properly sticking.

But then a lot of those same issues were there with the 3d extrusion printers and creative people have, mostly, found ways to make them reliable(ish).