Operations - Dispensing
Soldering paste dispensing involves the steps described below.
Placing PCB laminate on the machine bed
As instructed, put PCB laminate and spacer on the machine bed. You can use Manual control popup to move the machine’s head out of the way.
Inserting syringe in the machine
As instructed, you need to insert a syringe with soldering paste and dispensing needle, connect it to your machine and make sure there is sufficient compressed air supply.
“Bleeding” a syringe
Initially, when you attach a needle to a syringe, there’s no paste on the tip of the needle. Dispensing operation needs the paste to be right at the tip, so that when valve opens, the paste would start flowing immediately.
To achieve this, you need to press button Push several times. Every time you press the button, the valve opens for a little bit, pushing the paste closer to the tip of the needle. Keep on pushing until you get some paste out of needle.
Dispensing
The screen shows PCB outline and all soldering pads with syringe tool paths. To zoom in or out you can use one of the following ways:
- click on the corresponding icons in the upper left corner of PCB design pane
- hold Ctrl (or Cmd on Mac OS X) button and use the scroll wheel of your mouse
- press Ctrl+= (or Cmd+=) to zoom in, or Ctrl+- (Cmd+-) to zoom out
You can adjust the Tool diameter field in the Settings popover, which is the diameter of the needle you are using, so that the cirQWizard could generate tool paths more precisely.
Field Feed specifies the feed for dispensing operation (that is effectively a speed with which syringe moves while dispensing). Feed is specified in mm per minute. All of the other values in the Settings popover can be edited and will take immediate effect.
For your convenience offsets that were entered on previous steps can be checked (and should it be necessary edited) in Offsets pop-out pane.
You can also select on which pads exactly the paste is going to be dispensed. Pads can be selected with mouse. Selected pads can be enabled and disabled with toolbar buttons or with keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+E (or Cmd-E on Mac OS X) to enable, and Ctrl+D (or Cmd+D) to disable. Shortcut Ctrl+A (Cmd+A) selects all pads.
It’s best to start with one pad somewhere on the edge of the board and adjust the offsets as needed. If it didn’t work as expected from the first attempt, just wipe the paste with paper towel wetted with alcohol, and start over again adjusting the offsets as needed. When you are satisfied with this test pad, you can proceed with dispensing the paste on other pads. As dispensing operation goes on, compressed air is getting consumed. So, make sure the air pressure is kept within working range.
If you wish to have a look at G-Code that will be send to the machine, you can press a button with wrench icon in the toolbar.
When you are happy with all of the settings, press Run button. cirQWizard will send generated G-Code to the machine.