Dispensing Solderpaste with the Protomat S104

 This tutorial assumes that you just milled your PCB. The Protomat is able to produce blobs of solder paste down to a size of 0.4mm. This means that it will only dispense onto pads that have a size of at least 0.4mm in width and length.

When handling solder paste, read the according chapter on the the Hazardous Substances page!

Generating Dispenser Toolpaths

To create the toolpaths, click on "Toolpath -> Dispense". In the pop-up window, click first "Run" and then "Close"

Dispensing

In a box above the Protomat labeled "Protomat Accessories" you'll find a little styroform box that contains the 3 things you need for the process.

Styroform Box 800 600Dispensing Acessories Annotated

  1. The dispenser needle.
  2. A solder paste cartridge (please take an open one if available)
  3. The cartridge holder

The dispenser needle is very fragile, so handle it with care! Make sure you don't bump the tip into anything, especially when assembling and mounting the cartridge holder.
Assemble the cartridge holder as seen in the video below:

Then start the Dispense Wizard by clicking on "Wizards -> Dispense Wizard"

Click on "Next" until you reach the step "Measure Material Thickness". Then click on "Measure", wait for the machine to take a measurement and click on "Next".
The next dialog will ask you to mount the cartridge holder. You can see a video on how to mount the cartridge holder below. Again, be careful with the dispenser needle!

For the following steps, just perform the tasks that the wizard tells you, they should be straight forward until you reach the "Alignment" window. The machine should find the fiducal automatically, and if so, click on "Accept Current Position". Otherwise you should ask the responsible Fablab Hiwi for help. The next steps, again, are intuitive and in the end the protomat should have applied the solder paste.

In the final step click on "Finish" to go through the procedure of dismounting the cartridge holder. Afterwards, put the accessories back where they came from.

You can now place components by hand or using our Pick and Place machine.

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