Pin Insertion Machine - SO19250

Overview

The pin insertion machine is a small mill for sticking pins into circuit boards. The X/Y table is standard and the Z "axis" is a rotary mechanism for inserting the pins. One 360 degree revolution of the axis creates one punch action that inserts one pin.

It is a HiCON machine with absolute encoders, with a standard 2000 series mill control. There is a pre-setup dashboard with some buttons.

Video: M:\Production\Customer Backups\Bead Electronics_David Brenton\19250_Custom\bead_running.mp4

Fixture Offsets

All three axes have absolute encoders. The X and Y axes can be zero'd as normal. The Z axis should always have it's fixture offset set at the fully retracted position.

For certain types of pins (though it was not explained to us why), the rotary mechanism (Z axis) needs to start from a different location. This is done by setting the G52 offset for the Z axis. They have on their dashboard buttons for incrementing, decrementing, and resetting the G52 offset for the Z axis.

Gcode

Their gcode is generated by a post from CamTool, written by Harvey Lemire <Harvey@camtool.com>. At the top are three lines for setting the motor acceleration for the Z axis, the G52 offset, and moving the rotary mechanism forward to the fully retracted position. After that is a series of X/Y positioning moves and pin insertions. The values for the acceleration and G52 offset are entered in the CamTool software.

The pin insertion is done by commanding the Z axis to go 360 degrees, in subroutine O9999. They have a button on their dashboard for turning on "Pin Dryrun", which is really just activating block delete to skip the Z motion.