Voltera Solder Paste Dispense

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Jason von Nieda

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Aug 31, 2016, 12:43:23 PM8/31/16
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Just noticed Voltera posted a video of their machine doing solder paste dispense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdJQ5Xl4jkw

Looks really good, and they sell their dispensing head relatively cheaply: https://voltera.io/store

Might be worth looking at seeing if it could be adapted to work on a DIY machine. 

Jason

Rich Obermeyer

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Aug 31, 2016, 1:00:38 PM8/31/16
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The V-One can typically paste passives down to 0402, and ICs with pin pitch 0.5 mm
Cartridge is $49.95 for refill.
Its pretty nice.

Interesting how they paste most of the pad like a 3d printer. Can openpnp do that?

What about the probe that uses a sensitive proximity sensor that creates a topography of your board with 20 micron precision.  That could help openpnp as well.

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Mike Harrison

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Aug 31, 2016, 1:08:29 PM8/31/16
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On Wed, 31 Aug 2016 10:00:33 -0700, you wrote:

>The V-One can typically paste passives down to 0402, and ICs with pin pitch
>0.5 mm
>Cartridge is $49.95 for refill.

That's pretty expensive - looks like very fine paste.

Jason von Nieda

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Aug 31, 2016, 1:45:10 PM8/31/16
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I was mostly interested in it from the perspective that it looks like they are getting really good results with a stepper driven plunger, versus requiring an auger and air pressure. I'd say this keeps the hope alive that we can do dispensing without a complicated setup.

Jason


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Mike Harrison

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Aug 31, 2016, 1:54:15 PM8/31/16
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On Wed, 31 Aug 2016 17:44:58 +0000, you wrote:

>I was mostly interested in it from the perspective that it looks like they
>are getting really good results with a stepper driven plunger, versus
>requiring an auger and air pressure. I'd say this keeps the hope alive that
>we can do dispensing without a complicated setup.

That's the finest line I've seen done by a dispenser, which makes me think it's either fine-mesh
paste, or something slightly unusual/custom to get round some of the usual problems dispensing
solder paste.
the nozzle also looks slightly unusual

Jason von Nieda

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Aug 31, 2016, 1:55:48 PM8/31/16
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I wouldn't be surprised if it's a custom formulation. The project lead is a nano fluids expert, so it's quite possible she's developed something to solve the inherent problems of dispensing paste from a plunger. They had to do the same with their conductive ink.

Jason


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Cri S

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Aug 31, 2016, 2:40:28 PM8/31/16
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I'm surprised if its real solder paste and not conductive glue mixed with solvents and aluminium nano particles acting as color pigments in addition to help keep glue in suspension.

Mark Harris

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Aug 31, 2016, 2:40:55 PM8/31/16
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Wow, that looks really nice - best solder paste dispensing i've seen from something non-pizeo based. I'll try to get one ordered today.

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Jason von Nieda

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Aug 31, 2016, 2:43:18 PM8/31/16
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On their specs page they say the solder paste alloy is " Sn42/Bi57.6/Ag0.4"


Jason


On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 11:40 AM Cri S <phon...@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm surprised if its real solder paste and not conductive glue mixed with solvents and aluminium nano particles acting as color pigments in addition to help keep glue in suspension.

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Mark Harris

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Aug 31, 2016, 2:58:39 PM8/31/16
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Oh it's bismuth? Thats no good.

On 31 August 2016 at 12:43, Jason von Nieda <ja...@vonnieda.org> wrote:
On their specs page they say the solder paste alloy is " Sn42/Bi57.6/Ag0.4"


Jason
On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 11:40 AM Cri S <phon...@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm surprised if its real solder paste and not conductive glue mixed with solvents and aluminium nano particles acting as color pigments in addition to help keep glue in suspension.

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Matt Brocklehurst

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Aug 31, 2016, 3:11:39 PM8/31/16
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Whats up with bismuth? (No idea… so figured i’d ask lol)

On 31 Aug 2016, at 19:58, Mark Harris <ma...@rris.com.au> wrote:

bismuth

Rich Obermeyer

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Aug 31, 2016, 3:22:01 PM8/31/16
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Bismuth has used as a lead replacement by many companies.
Why the negative remark?

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Rich

Mark Harris

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Aug 31, 2016, 3:29:17 PM8/31/16
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Low melt temp, softer, not as high quality joint under stress, doesnt like temperature cycling. Fine for 99% of hobby applications, I do a lot of high stress boards though.

I spoke to their live support person, and he said it takes standard 5cc EFD cartridges... so we should be OK :)

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Cri S

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Aug 31, 2016, 3:39:19 PM8/31/16
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If there is lead contamination, solder temperature go down to 85 deg. C .

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Matt Baker

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Aug 31, 2016, 5:43:04 PM8/31/16
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Have not looked at Voltera's tech, but their ink traces may not be able to withstand the temp necessary for lead free or even lead paste.  The bismuth variable may not have anything to do with the dispenser tech.

Michael Anton

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Aug 31, 2016, 11:51:14 PM8/31/16
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Solder paste is normally pretty expensive, but $49.95 for 2mL of paste, that is the most expensive I have ever seen.

The nozzle looks exactly like the tip on a 0.5mm mechanical pencil I have.

It is a nice pasting demo though.  I suspect it is a special paste formulation with lots of flux in order to achieve that, as the paste looked far runnier than anything I have ever used.

Mike


On Wednesday, August 31, 2016 at 11:00:38 AM UTC-6, Maddog wrote:
The V-One can typically paste passives down to 0402, and ICs with pin pitch 0.5 mm
Cartridge is $49.95 for refill.
Its pretty nice.

Interesting how they paste most of the pad like a 3d printer. Can openpnp do that?

What about the probe that uses a sensitive proximity sensor that creates a topography of your board with 20 micron precision.  That could help openpnp as well.
On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 9:43 AM, Jason von Nieda <ja...@vonnieda.org> wrote:
Just noticed Voltera posted a video of their machine doing solder paste dispense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdJQ5Xl4jkw

Looks really good, and they sell their dispensing head relatively cheaply: https://voltera.io/store

Might be worth looking at seeing if it could be adapted to work on a DIY machine. 

Jason

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Mark Harris

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Sep 1, 2016, 2:19:07 AM9/1/16
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For the price of the paste, i wonder if it's worth just buying syringes and a tub of solder:

if the paste needs to be thinner can just use a drop of some no clean flux compatible with the paste?

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Mark Harris

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Sep 1, 2016, 12:57:13 PM9/1/16
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Just got off the phone with them, apparently any T4 or T5 particle size solder paste is acceptable and they support people loading their own syringes. They've tested from I think he said 100 to 400 pascal second viscosity paste with the extruder and it's worked well - they are using custom paste which they load themselves however. Loading your own paste is possible, but requires a centrifuge to do properly - they'll be posting instructions on their website.

Cri S

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Sep 1, 2016, 1:55:13 PM9/1/16
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As new solder paste is 500 to 700 kcps
and old solder paste is from 750 to 10000 kcps
Dilute to get viscosity of maple syrup resolve the problem of dispensing. The disadvantage is that there is too less solder particles for making reliable solder joint. It probably works for prototype , as it is then nothing more as heat activated conductive glue that are less bound that the red glue. For prototype it's really a cheap and viable solution.

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Jacob Christ

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Sep 1, 2016, 10:22:40 PM9/1/16
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Or warm up the tip.

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Mark Harris

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Sep 1, 2016, 11:20:48 PM9/1/16
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So looks like I'll have a full Voltera V-One next week.. will take photos so we can look at reverse engineering the use of the paste extruder. Its probably not worth building our own when its only $50 to buy, just a matter of figuring out the interface mechanically :)

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Jason von Nieda

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Sep 1, 2016, 11:22:49 PM9/1/16
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That's great Mark! I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the machine. I'm thinking of getting one myself. Seems like that + OpenPnP is a pretty amazing full prototyping platform.

Jason


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Jacob Christ
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Ray Kholodovsky

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Sep 1, 2016, 11:26:54 PM9/1/16
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Yes!  Reverse engineer, we shall. 

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Jacob Christ
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Mark Harris

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Sep 2, 2016, 12:35:45 AM9/2/16
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Well i'm going in knowing that that the traces have relatively high resistance, but the speaking to the guy who designed the ink he said they've tested it to 100mhz, and the university of waterloo is doing some high frequency characterisation for them (same sort of govt. grant funded work as I do at my job). I have the equipment to characterise their ink myself, up to 6ghz (can go to 12.4GHz with my home equipment, but its slow vs the realtime 6.. so I don't bother haha) - its going to be very interesting to see.

My aim for buying the voltera is to be able to turn a breakout board for a component around in an hour or so - sure I can do it with etching or milling as many people say on reviews/comments on that machine, but with the safety stuff at work its a lot harder to do than at home. Plus its a lot easier to click some buttons on a machine than have to do all the imaging of the board and etching, and chemical disposal and such ;)

I'll post a review here when I try it out.  A colleague got a batch 1 machine which was less than amazing, but they are replacing it with a batch two machine that is meant to be much improved.

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Andrew Frazer

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Sep 21, 2016, 7:02:12 AM9/21/16
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How did this end up going

Mark Harris

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Sep 22, 2016, 10:23:37 PM9/22/16
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Sorry, forgot to follow up on this - We have a V1 at work now however I haven't used it a huge amount. I've run the hello world circuit (went smoothly), some resistance test prints, some RF test prints (see their community forums for posts on that), and a quick breakout and test board yesterday. The ink they are using is very hard to solder to, it doesnt like to wet out and using anything except the Kester silver solder they include goes pretty badly. The ink is functional for making breakouts but I wouldn't build any sort of production or probably even prototype circuit out of it due to the difficulty in wetting out the cured ink with solder. This is fine for what I bought it for, and fits well within the realm of my uses for it. The breakouts for me just need to last an hour or two as I test code against it, and ensure the circuit is functional. 

The board I printed yesterday was about a 3hr turnaround from start of design to finished cured assembled board. Half of that time was curing, so man hours wise it was only about 35mins. It only had about 12 parts on it, so it wasnt fancy (0603, 1206, SOT-23-3), but it did what I needed before the parts fell off haha. I think the parts falling off was more the working time of the solder. Someone moved my parts from my desk and it took me about 45mins to find them - the paste was looking fairly dry by the time I was done.

The paste dispensing is very good, you do need to tweak the flow as it prints however. I think, based on watching the gear move, that what they are doing is applying pressure with the plunger onto the syringe, and they have a known flow rate out of the nozzle. They then use this to move the machine at the speed required to get the correct deposition, then they back off the plunger and the flow basically stops at that point. I make this assumption based on quite a few of the movements they do, as they back off the pressure and then restart the trace when printing ink fairly frequently, there isn't any visible movement of the plunger gear as it prints - but this could just be it moving in very small microsteps, I'd likely have to stick a logic analyser on the step/direction pins of their drivers to determine this. They do however have a known viscosity for their ink, and a known orifice - so its just a little bit of math to figure out the movement at a known pressure - the flow adjustment would then be speed of movement rather than movement of the plunger. I haven't done any testing to determine this though so I could be WAY off the mark.



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