I know that V-One has barely started shipping... but here's the start of my wish list for V-Two:
- CSA/UL/IC certifications to satisfy the occupational health and safety folks here at work.
- Non-contact homing using captouch or inductive sensing for setting up the probe/nozzle position (I've broken two nozzles related to homing)
- Better stepper drivers for smoother movement/less high pitch noises
- Larger build area (haven't hit the limits yet... but you know how these things go!)
- Gantry/Head lighting
- Down camera (See below)
- Improved ink solderability/wetting out
- Improved ink conductivity
- Support for thicker substrates (to print on stuff) (and printing on curved sufaces?!)
- More of the same awesomeness
So the down camera... I think one should be mounted at the to of the head, looking down, so it as a long of a focal distance as possible (to have reduced distortions). This would allow you to line up a print visually on the substrate, as well as centre find features on the board for both ink and paste printing. Even just the $50 ELP USB cameras that are being used by most of the OpenPNP folks would be perfect - OpenPNP does some neat stuff with vision, as does LitePlacer.
As to printing on thicker stuff/curved stuff. It could be fun to have a high resolution probe mode for the surface so we can deposit ink on printed surfaces. I'm very lucky to have access to a $500k Stratasys Fortus which can print Ultem, the chamber temperature for this is higher than most people 3d print at.. meaning it can take a 240c reflow cycle just fine. I have no idea what circuit I'd put on something, or on an insert into something (take a small chunk of 3d geometry, print on it, insert into larger shape).. but once the capability is there ideas start to flow