EFD 2400 solder-paste dispensing workstation

Do you have a band of elves to do the dispensing for you? It takes a steady hand, excellent vision and strong motivation to pull this off. Get yourself a proper frame, a squeegee and a stencil.

-- Joe Legris

Several years ago, I had a Pace rework station which had a pressure operated paste dispenser built in. I found it to be pretty unreliable in actual use and resorted to just placing the paste by hand with a syringe and plunger.

I bought a used Manncorp pick & place a couple years back, and paid a premium for one with an automatic paste dispenser. The motivation being that I really only do small runs with a lot of changeovers. I thought that having a dispenser would speed things up and make the process cheaper since I would no longer have to buy stencils. Unfortunately it didn't turn out like that (several reasons) and I went back to my stencils.

You can get an automatic dispenser used for about the same price as a new benchtop manual dispenser. Search eBay for "Asymtek" They are the big-boys when it comes to automatic fluid dispensing. There's a couple of decent machines listed right now.

Chris

If you have a reliable pump and a small 3-axis (or even 2.1 axis) CNC machine to move the dispenser around on the board, I could see that being the "band of elves". I could also see that the potential for screw-ups (reliable pump seems like a trick, though I wonder if a peristaltic might work) is probably still higher than screen-printing the stuff on.