It feels like things are coming along. I have first 15 boards successfully assembled, 8 boards sold! I have this website Minimig.ca up and running and active posts on eBay, Kijiji and Etsy. My seller reviews are great and people are thanking me for providing new Amiga boars in 2021. Isn’t that awesome!
Ok so what is next? I have four projects in the pipeline. First Minimig Mini ATX. This is larger version of Minimig that can fit any Mini ATX case. You can read about the project here: http://www.illuwatar.se/project_pages/mini-minimig/mini-minimig.htm. Second, I am working on Sidewinder board. This is compact board that can run AGA Amiga and 020 CPU all on one Altera FPGA IC. Once I am done with BOM and assembling first boards I will make sure I have p&p configuration in place so I can accelerate production. Third on the list is ReAmiga 1200 assembly. I can use my p&p machine for assembling A1200 boards, at least passive components and some easily available ICs. I think that will help Amiga community since most tedious part of ReAmiga 1200 build is dealing with SMD caps and resistors. Finally I am preparing new Minimig board release – Minimig 1.21 with 4MB of RAM on the board. Huh… Looks like I am going to be busy for some time.
Before I make more comprehensive review of my cheap pick and place machine from China, I would like to say that I am very pleased with the performance of this system. I am using QuHE TVM802A – Dual vision. Machine is robust and reliable. However keep in mind, it is not super easy to setup and calibrate this device. It takes time and patience. Finally once I learned how to adjust everything I was able to achieve great precision, speed and reliability. Other thing to keep in mind is that I am using 0805 components (2mm x 1.2mm). These components are fairly large and easy to deal with. Some time soon I will move to 603 size. I will inform you about the results but I am not overly optimistic. But who knows 🙂
Aside from figuring out how to setup, program and use p&p machine I learned how and where to order reels. Using reels with 1000+ components really reduced my cost for passives. I have great supplier from China. This is also important since there is a lot of fake crap on Chinese electronics market. However at the same time you can easily find fantastic companies in China and very professional people. Like everywhere else.