Pseudonymous maker and YouTuber “iforce2d” has constructed what they consider to be “the world’s smallest LinuxCNC construct,” making a compact desktop soldering robotic utilizing a WeenyPRU board and a Raspberry Pi single-board pc (SBC).

“The explanation I wished to have a machine like this,” the maker explains, “is as a result of I am beginning to have increasingly more of those IO [Input/Output] mixer boards to assemble, or a minimum of partially assemble. They arrive to me from JLPCB and to get them into this state we have to add 112 pins, which I have been soldering manually to date.”

Soldering 112 header pins is ok for brief runs, however for bigger volumes shortly will get boring — which is the place the “Weeny Solder Bot” is available in. Designed so as to add programmable real-time capabilities to a Raspberry Pi in as small a type issue as doable — therefore “Weeny Programmable Actual-time Unit” — utilizing an STMicro STM32F103C8 “Blue Tablet” microcontroller. With this, the Raspberry Pi beneficial properties four-axis stepper motor management at as much as a 50kHz step fee, a 10kHz spindle PWM management, 14 digital inputs or outputs, two analog inputs, a rotary encoder, RGB LED strip management — as a result of why not?

This compact but feature-packed board is then used to create a tool managed by LinuxCNC, although a customized G-code interface, which might solder every pin robotically — taking the drudgery out of meeting, although not fairly as shortly as a hotplate or wave-soldering machine. The completed joints aren’t the best, both — with just a few dry joints and several other bridges — nevertheless it’s sufficient to show the core idea, a minimum of.

The complete mission video is on the market above, whereas iforce2d has launched supply code for the WeenyPRU on GitHub underneath the reciprocal GNU Normal Public License 2.