Admin Picking up SMD parts is quick and easy with a vacuum pick-up tool. It is specially designed for picking and placing small components such as integrated circuits, resistors, capacitors, and other tiny parts. The tool is equipped with a silicone suction cup that will not mark or leave residue on the components.
- Vacuum pick and place tool for electrical components
- Non-marking suction cups
- Maintenance-free – no batteries required
How does it work?
To operate the tool, simply assemble the vacuum pump, adapter, and suction cup together, press and hold the hole, pick up the component, place it, then release the suction hole. A vacuum is created but the probe allows the suction cup to grip the component. The SMD vacuum pickup tool is easy to use and only requires a power source.
Contains different optics
The SMD vacuum pickup tool is specially designed for picking and placing electrical components such as semiconductors and passives. The kit includes one of the following: 3/16″, 3/8″, and 1/2″ dia. Non-marking suction cups accommodate different shapes and sizes of different components.
A vacuum pick-up tool
When working with grain-of-dust surface-mount components, one tool that makes a huge difference is the vacuum pickup pen. Instead of trying to remove the part with tweezers and succeeding in yanking it into the middle distance, a small rubber suction cup with a vacuum feed allows you to pick it up and place it exactly where it’s needed. Unfortunately, good vacuum pickup equipment comes at a price, and the very cheap ones aren’t worth the expense.
This is where the SMD vacuum pickup tool comes in. The problem with cheap tools is that not only are their manual vacuums ineffective, but they also come with the necessary probes with suction cups. The solution is to take a small vacuum pump with a low voltage motor and attach it to the business end of a cheap vacuum tool with a 3D printed adapter and make the result a useful tool.
There’s a short video of the tool in action that we’ve put below the break. It’s a bit noisy, but it’s clear that it works well. Controlled via an air hole on the side of the 3D print, place a finger over it and full suction is directed towards the tip. The result is simpler and cheaper than previous competitors in the budget vacuum pickup stake.
Béla creates a clever pick and place tool
Developer and manufacturer Durucz Béla have created what is “probably world’s cheapest vacuum tweezer,” a clever modification of an off-the-shelf mechanical vacuum pen that makes it considerably more usable for pick-and-place tasks.
“Grabbing SMD parts with a regular tweezer can be difficult,” Béla explains, which is what the tool is designed to solve. “It can come into contact with solder paste, which makes it sticky, just won’t release! Also picking up small parts can be extremely difficult, let’s move on to a more professional tool: vacuum pickup.”
Commercial vacuum pickup equipment, pull a vacuum to suck a part on the end of a blank probe and release it once it is in place, is usually expensive; The manual suction pen, which uses a mechanical bladder to pull a vacuum when you squeeze, is “a joke, but a good starting point,” says Béla.
This 3D-printed adapter combines a vacuum pump with a manual suction pen to help pick up and deploy air.
Finishing point: Low-cost motorized vacuum tweezers, made by combining an inexpensive pump with those “funny” manual suction pens. “Straight and curved tips (probes) with rubber pads (cups) are hard to make at home, so order one of these cheap junks first,” explains Béla. “One more thing to order: a vacuum pump.
“Recover the pen head and 3D print the adapter. The pump should fit perfectly, but the pen head is designed with more tolerance. Glue the head and power the pump. Easy to operate: just use your finger!”
More information on the project is available on Béla’s website, while the 3D print files are released on Printables too, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Read more
