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Anyone have tips/recommendations for manual wire bonders? Been thinking about getting an ebay unit for ages.

Wedge or ball? Gold or aluminum? Heat or ultrasonic? Any brands to specifically look for, or to avoid?

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So this is an interesting idea someone just showed me: https://ephemeron-labs.com/new-products-1/8sr4jlt168t5rifluoslpgdys8qwd0

Basically tweezers + XYZ stage and some silver epoxy. Would be super easy to DIY.

Definitely not as slick as a real wire bonder but would probably work fine for low volume and large'ish pads

Could pair it with Norland 130 for a more streamlined system (UV light to tack in place, heat to fully cure later). Not sure how conductive NCA130 is compared to traditional silver epoxy though

cc @North @jmorris

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@breakingtaps @North @jmorris and with enough xyz stages you don't even need the tweezers any more!

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@breakingtaps @North very interesting. Seems like it would be useful for epoxying tiny mmwave diodes, too.
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@breakingtaps I used such a setup (but with goniometric stages) during my thesis work to contact III-V components.
- stripped optical fiber as a tool
- dip into epoxy droplet, pull up to neck down epoxy into a cone
- touch bond pad with tip of epoxy cone

resulting dabs can be 20-50 µm.

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@MisterHW Oh awesome, thanks for the confirmation! 20-50um would work great for me, I was planning pads around there (or a bit larger).

Guess it's time to build one!

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