The KickStarter is now live! We had a lot of interest at the Orlando Maker Faire so we decided to go ahead a launch our KickStarter and let it run through the remaining Maker Faires we will be attending.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/protovoltaics/pick-and-place-machine-by-protovoltaics

We are now making the changes to increase operating speed of the PnP. We believe this will get us up above 1000 components per hour. The biggest change we are making is with the rotational alignment. We are currently rotating the parts with a stepper motor and belt. The problem is the belt has slack in it, so when we say rotate 3 degrees it might rotate 2 degrees. Due to this we have to remain over the upward looking camera to double/triple check to make sure the part got rotated properly. With the new way we will be doing this we will know the part is going to rotate 3 degrees, and we will not have to sit over the camera. We can apply the correct on the fly over to the place location.