The Index Pick and Place is an open source pick and place machine to aid in Mid-Scale Manufacturing.
This project is under development. It is not currently in a stable state. Development is active and ongoing, but this is not yet a finished design. If you'd like to build one to help find bugs and design issues, please do!
Please read the wiki here! The wiki covers information about the state of the project, contributing instructions, and frequently asked questions.
The Index is designed to be low-cost enough that someone could buy or build one to support making production runs at home or as a small business. It runs using OpenPnP. The Index will eventually be able to do multiple parts of the PCBA manufacturing process. It is currently capable of picking parts and placing them, but eventually the Index will support solder paste dispensing and interfacing with other machines, such as a PCB panel hopper and reflow oven.
Along with the Index machine itself, the project also includes feeders designed to work with the Index. Although they were designed with the Index in mind, they can work with any OpenPnP pick and place with a 20mm x 20mm rail for mounting.
The Index's development process is being cataloged in a series of videos. A playlist of these can be found here.
It is currently not recommended that folks build the Index for practical purposes. Development is still in progress, so all builds at this time should be considered part of the R&D effort. That being said, we are working on build instructions that can be found on the docs page!
If you would like to contribute to the project, awesome! Check out the contributing page to get started.
Discussion about the project happens on the STR Discord server!