Hi All,
We just released a new software update. I wanted to highlight a few things:
Choose Your Own Alignment Pads
If you are:
- Printing the bottom side of a double sided board.
- Printing on a template board
- Dispensing solder paste
Then you must teach the software the location of two points on the board. The software will automatically suggest pads for you to locate, but for various reasons you may want to choose your own pads.
To choose your own, simply click on the pad you wish to locate, the yellow target will update to the pad you selected. The dashed line grey target (seen below) will indicate what the software recommends your second pad should be given the first pad you have selected.
After measuring the first pad, you can override the second pad as well. As a rule of thumb, choose small pads that are spaced far apart to get good alignment.
Backlash Compensation
We have also upgraded the firmware (v0.1.0) to support backlash compensation. On most units the backlash in the X and Y axis is about 10-20 microns, a value so small that it practically makes no difference to print quality.
However - it came to our attention that certain units may have larger than normal backlash. We recorded some units having backlash of 60 microns and some as high as 120 microns. If your printed circles tend to look like ovals, then your unit might have backlash.
@mewertow came up with a really smart way to diagnose and compensate for backlash here. Let us know if you have any issues.
Feature Requests
We do our best to triage requests as they come in. We got a chance to tackle the following in this update.
Load Last Circuit button is now available when the printer is disconnected. As mentioned here, If you open the software without a printer connected, you can triple click the large white logo to access the 3 features.
*.GBR files are now accepted in the solder paste dispensing feature.
Please let us know how we are doing, and what we should be working on!
- Jesus Zozaya
