LitePlacer.com forums

Hi - I'm sorry if this question was answered elsewhere but I couldn't find the answer. I was in the process of building my own CNC, I had a few questions. If I purchased the cameras/vacuum pump/controller from you and built the mechanics myself are there "gotchas" regarding the mechanics? i.e. will your pnp software work with an arbitrary CNC machine of any size? Thanks

AFAIK..the current software only supports the TinyG controller boards. However, the OpenPnP software/project should support a wide range of controller boards.
So you could buy the parts from LP & use the OpenPNP s/w, if you want a different controller board.

If you use a TinyG controller...then there shouldn't be an issue wrt machine size.

The bigger question is that all the dust/particles created from a CNC machine would be very bad for a pnp machine....unless you have 'perfect' clean-up before each pick&place job.

Juha may have a more informed view on your questions.

As noted, the LitePlacer software only supports TinyG at the moment. If you want to use another controller and want to do some software, it is doable, but the details are not trivial. Even though the communication is g code, the interactive nature of PnP application makes the communication somewhat control board specific.

Also as said, I don’t think a combined CNC / PnP machine is a good idea, because of the chips and dust.