Happy September! Here's what happened at Opulo last month:
Lead Times
Our production team has been hard at work, reducing our lead times for LumenPnPs and feeders down to 3 weeks.
The official lead time on each product's page is the most accurate metric for when your hardware will ship. While we are working hard to ship products early, we suggest relying on the information posted on our website to play it safe.
Photon v1.0.6
We recently released a major update on Photon, the firmware that runs on our feeders. This update comes with a tremendous improvement in precision and a few great bug fixes.
This firmware is compatible with every 8mm and 12mm feeder ever sold, so we encourage all customers to give the update a try. You'll particularly see improvements with 0402 parts and tape with 2mm feed pitches.
To learn more about the specific updates and improvements in Photo v1.0.6, check out the video below.
As always, please feel free to send us your thoughts on the latest firmware update at support.opulo.io.
Warranty
Opulo does its best to keep customers’ products running regardless of when they purchased them (we still ship replacement parts to customers who bought v2 of the LumenPnp in 2022!). We're in the business of helping people build their products. Shipping free replacement parts is not only inexpensive, it's also 100% in service of our overall mission.
When we started Opulo, our products had a warranty of 3 months.
We recently decided to update our warranty policy to better reflect what we actually do. We now have a 1- year warranty across the board for all of our products.
In general, if you have an issue with one of our products, reach out to us. Our team will do everything we can to keep your machine up and running for as long as we can.
Paste Extruder
Our intern, Jerome, has completed the EVT unit of our paste extruder. After finishing validation, we’ve moved into sourcing, documentation, and finalizing software.
We wanted to make a toolhead that prioritizes easy integration with the LumenPnp. The hardware solution we’ve developed has two parts.
The first part of the paste extruder is the toolhead itself, which has an auger system, drive motor, and a mount for the paste tube. This whole device mounts onto the LumenPnP toolhead, just like our existing paste extruder.
The other half of our system is a new cover for your control box. The cover has a pump and valve in a different pneumatic configuration specifically meant for applying pressure to the paste to ensure even dispensing. After you replace the cover, just swap the blue tubing over to the new port, and you're ready to go.
Not only does our new paste extruder allow you to paste 0402 pads without a stencil, it also supports TSSOP, large pads, and even tiny pitch parts such as QFPs.
The Paste Utility now will analyze your Gerber files, and decide how best to apply paste to the pad. It takes pad size, adjacent pad pitch, and dot size all into consideration. This means tight pitch pins get alternating dots—reducing the chance of solder bridges—and large pads get an array of dots, ensuring even paste coverage.
We're gearing up for a launch on this very soon, so keep an eye out on our social media for more information.
Job Postings
Opulo is growing quickly and we’re adding more people to our team.
You can check out our careers page for all the details of the jobs we have available. If you or someone you know would be a good fit for any of these roles, please apply!
We're currently hiring for:
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Assembly Technician
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Helping us assemble LumenPnPs, feeders, and accessories in our Pittsburgh office.
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Customer Service Specialist
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Responding to customer inquiries, managing quotes, helping customers get up and running
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Integration Engineer
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Full stack engineer comfortable with mechanical CAD, PCB design, software, and firmware. High agency, fast execution. Working on new projects.
Reach Out
If you have any feedback, questions, or comments about this update, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at support.opulo.io.
That’s all for now. We’ll be back next month with another update!