Components flipper

Overview

When I do manually PCB assembly, I frequently encounter components that are top side down in my ALL-BOX components container. It is very time-consuming to flip them back and then do pick and place. As my machine is semi-automatic pick and place machine, and the picking components job is done by human, I think a little components flipper will be helpful to my machine and manual PnP, too.

The idea is simple, I use two little disk driven by two 9g servos. When a button is pressed, the servo will drive the disks to hug the component and then flip it.

Design

The flipper looks like this:

I made it, but not very satisfied with the quality of the servo.

So I designed another one with stepper motor and better quality.

I made it and here is how it's looked like:

Got inspired by this: the components in the box can be easily randomly flipped by dropping the box. So I designed a little machine that with the box on top and a solenoid on the bottom to kick the box. It works well! :)