3D printed titanium selective soldering nozzle and pnp nozzle

[loki42]

So I earlier asked about material recommendations, I now have the prints and they work well. I got PCBWay to print them. They did a good job. Minimal clean up work was required, they came back with some questions about internal supports for the selective nozzle. It's very helpful they check the parts and ask where supports can be placed. In future I would supply a drawing and mark up which sections need to be clear internally / surface outside.

The selective nozzle is installed and is performing much better than the stock nozzles. I get much faster cycle time with  much better wave height, so I no longer have to worry about the nozzle colliding with the pins. The Ebso software is horrifically bad, so the more you can simplify the programming the better. The machine is working well now though. The titanium finish is quite good.

The PNP nozzle for the UIC inline 4 high force head is working well. I needed to laser cut a gasket and attach that, and I removed the filter and circlip from another nozzle. I got prints in stainless and nylon. I'll see how the nylon stands up. The stainless is better for ESD, but I'm only using the nozzle for connectors.

Files are here in case anyone needs them:
https://storage.googleapis.com/poly_effects1/uic_nozzle.step
https://storage.googleapis.com/poly_effects1/selective_20mm.step

[law]

Nice one!

You mention minimal clean up, but did you have to do much in the way of post-processing? I remember your previous message and talk of surface grinding.
Are you able to show a picture of the actual thing?

[loki42]

Attached pic of the titanium one.  They mentioned that some of the internal supports might still be inside so I ran drill through the main hole just to clean up a little building support that was still there.  I didn't need to grind or deburr that part.  The pick and place nozzle I didn't clean up at all. I was thinking about grinding them just to improve flatness and finish but haven't needed to and they seem to be working well so far. Obviously grinding is a much tighter tolerance process than 3d printing or cnc lathe. I'm not sure if reducing the roughness of the nozzle would improve holding powering much. I haven't tested RA or anything. 

[law]

Hey that looks pretty good.
Are you reasonably happy with the outcome? Would use again?

[kylehunter]

Awesome job!!

We have an Ebso selective as well, and you are not kidding about the software, it's brutal! We're in the progress of making some custom tools for it and adding a new control line for triggering nitrogen, as well as a new board carriage. If you're up for some collaboration, shoot me an email, kyle@microtype.io. I'd love to have some of your thoughts on it, and see what mods you've done.

[loki42]

Hey that looks pretty good.
Are you reasonably happy with the outcome? Would use again?

Yeah I'm very happy with the outcome. I'll use again.  It's very complex stuff to do on my mill turn and 3d printing really worked well for the nozzle.  For tight tolerance parts I think I'd go for machining but I'm in impressed with the quality of their machining too for the money.

I've previous got printing done by Hubs and this is much cheaper and much better quality for the few prints I've done.  I might just have been unlucky with hubs but the plastic parts from them were scrap. This is my first positive experience with 3d printing.  Lead time was a little longer than advertised.