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DIY tray for MDC Pick and Place machine
Akafugu recently purchased a new Pick and Place machine. We bought it locally here in Japan, from MDC co.,ltd.
It has a big tray holder space, and to save a bit on cost, we decided to try making our own DIY trays for some of the bigger parts we use.
Here is the result and build, we used two sheets of 2.5 mm MDF glued together. The bigger hole at the bottom is for using the reel tape for some very tall components (10mm high). It works great, and we are very satisfied with the result.
Our pick and place machine can take variable sized trays, but we wanted to be able to use both our DIY tray together with regular JEDEC trays.
Here are some resources for JEDEC trays:
A regular JEDEC tray is 322.6 x 136mm, so we made our trays 136mm wide as well.
To make the tray design, we used Sketchup and the Svg output plugin.
We ordered the laser cutted 2.5 mm MDF from our good friend Emerge+.
Start by putting the top panel up side down and insert the 3 mm screws, they will later be used to align the top and the bottom pieces.
We used Loctite Mini as glue, but any glue should do. After applying the glue to the back side of the top layer we put on the bottom and secured the screws. We put some clamps on to hold the panels properly together while the glue cured.
This is the end result with some components placed. The only problem was the lower left diode, it was a bit bigger than the pocket so we couldn't use that space, but other than that is was perfect.