meca 500 – ROBOFIESTA

Having a soldering iron, a few build-a-breadboard kits, and a precision robot, it was only a matter of time before I made a robotic soldering video.

In another video- Mecademic Meca 500 Diode Loading Demo – we saw how the Meca 500 had the precision and agility to pick ‘n’ place diodes with delicate, easily-bent legs. The key to placement, I found, was inserting a “shimmy” during the -Z motion; the EOAT essentially “shivers” to ensure the diode legs don’t hang up on the edges of the breadboard ports. Details & code available in my post, “Mecademic Diode Load“

I had intended to print a custom EOAT to grip the soldering iron, but had an extra-long print running at the time ( base adapter for our new Elephant Robot ); I ended up using a utility EOAT with through holes for zipties to securely attach the iron.

To determine TCP (tool center point), I measured EOAT length to center of iron for Z (35.55mm), and centerline of EOAT to tip of iron for X (96.0mm).

Fine-tuning the smooth motion necessary for the delicate job of soldering is a joy with the Meca 500’s ability to jog in extremely small increments; I practiced on both of the following boards, using the 10 LED board for the video:

10 LEDs Soldering Practice Board

Electronic Piano Soldering Kit

As mentioned before, I love this soldering iron kit; it’s great value for money as well:

WEP 927-IV Soldering Station

I re-ran the motion sequence several times during filming with the iron off, to make sure the soldering tip wasn’t impacting the diode legs with too much force. I kept the blending value at 0 for the fine motion, as speed wasn’t the goal. The move / safe motion between diode legs is a little exaggerated, so it was more visible in the video.

The cold iron practice has a 1 second dwell at each diode leg. For the segment where I actually solder, I increased the dwell to 2 seconds per leg to make sure a good melt & solder joint was possible.

Here’s the code for both 1 sec and 2 sec dwell soldering sequences:

solder-1-sec Download

solder-2-sec Download

Here’s the link to the video on Youtube: RoboFiesta Mecademic Meca 500 Diode Soldering Practice

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With 5um repeatability, the Mecademic 500 is uniquely suited for applications requiring a high degree of precision. Prestaging of components is key, however, when using purely motion with no vision or dynamic location. The CanaKit Raspberry Pi breadboard provides a good stage for this work, which could be adapted for backloading & soldering manufacturing applications. Watch the video here.

Word of warning- have a few “burner” parts for use during setup. Once the diode legs get bent they are difficult to straighten!

It’s difficult to see, but the robot performs a “shimmy” action as it places the 2 diodes. This utilized the Mecademic’s ability to jog in very fine increments when building the program- in this case, 0.05mm and finer. This motion was to offset the variance in prestage presentation of the diodes, and the spring memory in the fragile diode legs. The program is included below.

Meca-Diodes-Working