Pseudonymous maker and YouTuber “iforce2d” has constructed what they consider to be “the world’s smallest LinuxCNC construct,” making a compact desktop soldering robotic utilizing a WeenyPRU board and a Raspberry Pi single-board pc (SBC).
“The explanation I wished to have a machine like this,” the maker explains, “is as a result of I am beginning to have increasingly of those IO [Input/Output] mixer boards to assemble, or at the least partially assemble. They arrive to me from JLPCB and to get them into this state we have to add 112 pins, which I have been soldering manually to this point.”
Soldering 112 header pins is ok for brief runs, however for bigger volumes rapidly will get boring — which is the place the “Weeny Solder Bot” is available in. Designed so as to add programmable real-time capabilities to a Raspberry Pi in as small a type issue as potential — therefore “Weeny Programmable Actual-time Unit” — utilizing an STMicro STM32F103C8 “Blue Capsule” microcontroller. With this, the Raspberry Pi features four-axis stepper motor management at as much as a 50kHz step price, a 10kHz spindle PWM management, 14 digital inputs or outputs, two analog inputs, a rotary encoder, RGB LED strip management — as a result of why not?
The soldering robotic is useful, however the outcomes may use slightly tweaking to keep away from dry joints and bridges. (📷: iforce2d)
This compact but feature-packed board is then used to create a tool managed by LinuxCNC, although a customized G-code interface, which may solder every pin routinely — taking the drudgery out of meeting, although not fairly as rapidly as a hotplate or wave-soldering machine. The completed joints aren’t the best, both — with a couple of dry joints and several other bridges — but it surely’s sufficient to show the core idea, at the least.
The total mission video is accessible above, whereas iforce2d has launched supply code for the WeenyPRU on GitHub underneath the reciprocal GNU Basic Public License 2.