Late Christmas gift -- ideas wanted - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: blueskull
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 29, 2017, 10:09:52 pm
content: I've been looking for freeing my hands from tweezers for a while, and I think it's time to shop for a PnP machine.It will mainly be used for extremely low quantity production of designs (say, up to 1000 parts per day).Parts to be placed are mostly 0402, 0.5mm DFN/QFN and tiny 0.5mm DSBGAs, occasionally 0.4mm/0.5mm connectors that are PnP friendly.All large chips (QFN/BGA) will be hand placed. I almost never use leaded parts, so SOIC/TSSOP/QFP capability is not needed.0201/0.35mm DSBGA capability is well appreciated, I don't need speed nor high reliability on them, but being able to do it occasionally is very welcomed.Usually my boards contain less than 5 different parts that require automated PnP (>10 per board), so I don't need a heck a lot of feeders. I'm okay with hand placing odd parts.I would like the system to be as cheap as possible, with absolute maximum limit to be $5k, half or less is much more appreciated.So far I'm not looking into any particular brands, any brands out there are okay, as long as they work.I would like a tightly coupled and polished package like Chipsetter, but I'm not buying a $5k gear from a dead company.VisionBot looks too "amateur" -- it looks like it comes straight from a garage and is hacked up together.TMV, Neoden and Liteplacer are my first choices, though I'm open to other new players in the game.I don't care about loose parts of Liteplacer -- a bit of taping and calibrating is okay, I just want to be freed from pure manual PnP, I'm not expecting 100% automation.Similarly, I don't mind if the feeder of other devices are easy or hard to refill. Again, I just need to free my hands from tweezers.Any ideas and testimonies are appreciated. If it matters, my EDA package is Altium Designer.

author: jmelson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 30, 2017, 05:02:26 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on December 29, 2017, 10:09:52 pmDon't mess with hand placing anything! If you get a machine that can do 0402, then it ought to be able to handle most chips, too.The problem with hand placing is that you run a risk of knocking already-placed parts out of position.The new Chinese machines look quite interesting, but reading about them, it seems many of them are still somewhat experimental on the software side.There are a lot of last-generation machines on the market that still have a lot of life left in them. But, of course, those are usually larger than the table-top Chinese machines. So, if you don't have the room, that places some restrictions on it. With a used machine, you should be able to get a variety of feeders for it. With a new machine, you will pay a lot for feeders, maybe more than the machine. I have over 50 8mm feeders plus about a dozen more in the larger sizes. That is BARELY enough!I got a Philips CSM84 for $3600 about 10 years ago, and it has worked really well for me. But, it has no vision, so is not accurate enough for fine-pitch components. You ought to be able to find a decent machine with the features you need within your budget, if you just spend some time looking. Oh, watch out for machines that need 3-phase power, if you don't have that available in your location.I use Protel 99SE (predecessor to Altium), and wrote a program to take in their P&P file format and output the Philips format.Jon

author: Reckless
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2020, 09:39:59 pm
content: If I got any chinese pick place machine for christmas I would be seriously disappointed! Might have to kill myself. Too many horror stories.I had good luck with Chinese solder robots. They are on par with others in the industry because it doesn't require software. The minute any type of brain/thinking is involved better to buy from japan/korea.

author: Alicelllly2020
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 07, 2020, 09:03:24 am
content: Hi Blueskull,Greetings, this is Alice from Neoden.Glad to know that Neoden is one of your first choices, our model Neoden3V seems to meet your requirements, please kindly check attached files for your kind reference.If you have any interests, please feel free to contact me.Contact: Alice LeeEmail: sales4@neodentech.comMob: +86-13588176839Skype: Alice-NeodenBest regards,Alice

author: Reckless
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 07, 2020, 09:06:25 pm
content: For pick and place machines I agree. I don't like American machines either. They are way better than China can ever produce but not as nice as Japan/Korea/German. They were good back in the early SMT days. Universal Fusion is decent but software isn't to my liking. Even the old 1980s Universal GSM machines are superior to the 2020 machines coming from China. I know because I have seven of them.I do want to see China make the ultimate pick and place machine that is 1/10th the price of competing units and lasts a long time. But after soo many years not being able to make a viable reflow oven or make decent microprocessors has me highly doubtful they have the capability. I have been rooting for Neoden and hope they keep evolving and grow past the hobby consumer base and into a serious industrial business contender. Unfortunately they don't want to enter that market space.

author: Reckless
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 08, 2020, 03:05:15 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on April 08, 2020, 01:13:13 amMany used juki/samsung machines go under $10k. I've had dozens of pick place machines and the most I ever spent was $7500, generally $3-4k with feeders. None of them were cute, they were big, scary industrial monsters especially my 8,000 kilo, 6 meter Fuji chip shooters. Dealing with older machines spares are cheap. I might consider chinese machines if older used SMT machines werent so inexpensive.

author: SMTech
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 08, 2020, 09:20:25 am
content: Probably depends a bit where you are. I have no idea where you would find decent machines that cheap in the UK.

author: IconicPCB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 08, 2020, 05:27:37 pm
content: Have a look athttp://mechatronika.com.pl/en/products/pick-place/m10v.htmlIt may meet your requirements

author: SMTech
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 08, 2020, 10:30:35 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on April 08, 2020, 09:37:16 amAll major cities worldwide are expensive (at least in developed countries) and indeed the pricing is surprisingly similar, the solution of course is not to live/work in one. This is part of the reason Reckless won't get his 10x cheaper Chinese P&P, the people with the skills to develop such machines are no cheaper in China than anywhere else, like to live in cities, and have a skillset they can sell anywhere and the cost of a p&p is not in in its assembly. Cheap chinese p&p's are built down to a price and you can see it in almost every part of their design, as soon as you start addressing all those things I doubt you can get much better than 1/2 the price at which point other costs start factoring in quite heavily as to whether the saving is worth it.If I was after a small p&p to put in a home lab, I'd probably go with one of the little Chinese ones, something like a Neoden 3V or similar models from other vendors with vision. Of course they are all ugly and uncovered so you could look at the M10V I guess but I think the price difference might be surprising, and you possibly get a machine that's just as clunky to use, and slower. If I expanded the criteria to be able to do some real work an AUTOTRONIK 281 might be tempting but its bigger than it first appears.

author: IconicPCB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 08, 2020, 11:21:37 pm
content: I have this machine.It at the time when we purchased it was a lot more expensive than the neoden ( or any other small machine ).We decided to go with it because it could readily place 0402 cubic components. Shortly after we bought the machine the machine was confirmed to be able to handle 0201 size cubic with appropriate nozzle.The only drawback is feeders which come in two fixed banks. I looked at typical mix of tape widths found in assembly mix and selected feeder configuration to meet that typical mix. I should have selected all feeders as 8 mm banks and any wider tape components to be dispensed from cut tape feeders.I think back then it was an investment of about 15KEuro. The placement rate of 1400 to 1600 is not sales talk, it is a practical range , no puffery.

author: Reckless
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2020, 09:03:27 am
content: Quote from: SMTech on April 08, 2020, 10:30:35 pmWouldn't you be better off with an older Juki/Quad/Samsung/philips (Yamaha)? They all made smaller machines decades ago and are proven solutions. Even old Essemtecs from 10 years ago? The laser guided technology pre-camera days. I think Chinese pick place machines are smart to use Juki nozzles/yamaha feeders/etc - I was half sold on that. But when I contacted people from around the world who bought the chinese pick place machines none of them could get them running. I had heard of 1-2 experiences where they did but that was for every 9 I didn't.At one point I also wanted a machine to play with at home, almost pulled the trigger on a $100k Essemtec Fox with feeders (tiny fits through a door) then I got this with 400+ feeders for $3000:And now my home setup is a distant memory. I have been thinking about getting another pick place machine (flex mounter) even though I don't have a need for one currently. I do wish machine was even faster. 40,000 cph sounds fast but can only put out my boards every 8 seconds. Personally, since I have gone to a turret head I don't feel comfortable with individual spindle head and it has been super reliable. Only issue is keeping sensors clean of dirt.

author: SMTech
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2020, 09:32:10 am
content: Quote from: Reckless on April 09, 2020, 09:03:27 amWell the blueskull is talking about a small cute unit, presumably tabletop which makes sense for a small lab if you really want such a thing, and they are not common, older Essemtec/Dima machines are not that easy to find, too useful to keep in a corner for the low volume stuff if you grow out of them. Personally I think other 'little' machines like the Quad IVC have had their day well built some of them may be but they need need a fair bit of space still and if they need some TLC, that does require quite a bit of friendly help from somewhere. There are a few other small machines that existed for brief periods, Versatronics, Daum, Heeb but they are a little regional and have their issues.

author: Reckless
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2020, 11:05:37 am
content: Is there any connection between Essemtec and Dima? Their ovens look similar and even the pick and place have some resemblance. Does one manufacture for the other? Dima is not a brand we see/hear about in US.

author: SMTech
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2020, 01:00:51 pm
content: No Dima were Dutch with quite a different approach to feeders. Some of their older machines were bigger, more like a MyData/Europlacer/Versatec then they started making little ones like the ATOZ,HP-100 and MP100 (which is kinda normal sized). Somewhere in the 2010-2014 region they started focusing increasingly on conformal coating/dispensing using the same platforms, I'm pretty sure sales of p&p were fairly weak, there certainly weren't many to go and look at in the UK. Unlike Essemtec, Dima did have the entire line covered in-house, Essemtec did printing using 3rd parties (pbt & reprint) and now doesn't do printing at all.Then Nordson bought Dima & p&p went in the bin, they were quite nice looking machines, decent build quality, the user I met was happy with theirs. However they had zero bells and whistles, so no glue/dispense option on a p&p and hadn't made the step to a nice touch GUI like Essemtec had. They were cheaper than Essemtec, we were really put off by the lack of UK installs and the seeming lack of any promotional work by Dima for anything that wasn't dispense - I think we probably called it right.

author: Reckless
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2020, 06:11:24 am
content: Those old DIMA pick place machines look cool. The youtube videos make it seem like they were ahead of their time in 2004 with camera and smart feeders, even their software didn't look too clunky. Not sure how their feeders were. Their ovens resemble Essemtech ovens, share same parts and locations.How many boards are you pumping out per day with your Essemtec? My holy grail of pick place machines is the Fuji NXT M6. I don't think I am ever going to get her. I'm pretty sure my CP642s will outlive me as long as I have enough spares. I've been buying and collecting working units in my area.

author: SMTech
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2020, 01:35:45 pm
content: I'm not sure boards/day is a very useful metric, so many qualifiers:1 operator doing every process after part picking (which means sometimes one process holds up another)Standalone operation - no conveyors between processes (I think that costs at least 30 seconds/panel)Fairly low typical batch sizes.Very varied range of assemblies could be 30 parts or 900 on a panel equally could be a 10 line BOM or 100 line BOMDon't own the massive number of feeders we would need to be able to tool up multiple jobs to run sequentially as designs are getting more complex.Yesterday I made 100 fairly simple boards and then 40 boards that had ~350 parts on, however that design was new to us and also had some new part shapes that I spent some time tweaking to get the best possible pick accuracy and low reject rate. On that more complex board the machine claimed a place rate of about 4500cph but it cheats and doesn't take into account any of the handling time or the time it takes to check fiducials and load the first tool. The reality (averaged over the batch including delays caused by me instead the speed the machine meets when running) was closer to a device/second which fairly typical for a lot of the designs we see with a mix of QFN & SOICs etc but quite slow for the largely quite small components on the board in question (8&12mm tapes only). This is probably down to the fact the board was very long and thin making every run to a feeder then the camera and then to the place location about as sub-optimal as it could be. The same mix on a densely populated square board loaded slap in front of the camera would easily be much closer to the 6k cph this machine can achieve in the real world with CLM feeders. Turret heads aren't always quicker but on this board they would have slaughtered it especially if they had an on the fly camera.If you want to cram lots and lots of placement speed into as small a space as possible the Fuji NXT series are indeed super cool, and the Dynahead is pretty amazing too. Every module can be made to be what you want it to be pretty much at a whim. However that flexibility costs you in other ways, its not cheap and if you want to do lighting assemblies or other long boards, this is not for you. Similar in some ways is the K&S IX 502 or its predecessor the Assembleon AX5 but they needed another machine on the end to handle the bigger bits.

author: MR
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 10, 2020, 05:49:23 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on April 08, 2020, 05:31:51 pmThose shitty machines are all between 10k-40k EUR (from their Distributors), effectively I'd rate them between 2k-4k (seen from their performance)Stay away from Mechatronika... only beginners who have absolutely no idea about pick and place machines would buy such a machine, even if it's a m10v, the software is the same crap as what they have delivered to us. Check Ebay, search for a reputable manufacturer and you'll get something real, good used pick and place machines aren't that expensive anymore.And the blockfeeders (drag feeders under the hood) are really not worth more than a few 100$ 2 stepper motors inside and a few solenoids etc...As for the bang for the buck .. you'll end up very negative with Mechatronika and they end up very wealthy for selling cheap shit.Our usual question to Mechatronika is where is the camera which they have invoiced us but not integrated - we never got an answer for that, if they would be honest they'd say sorry something went wrong and ship it over.We have disassembled and rebuilt our entire machine some screws of the portal were even loose (after we received it from Mechatronika, yes now it works with our software ... so now we have at least some knowledge about pick and place machines).Some plastic tapes might jam up in Mechatronika feeder boxes, if you have several of those the entire feeder block will be jammed for all components (confirmed by other users in another forum).In the meanwhile we have also integrated support for pneumatic and electronic CL-Feeders (there are several variations out there), and they're ages ahead of those crappy block-feeders.And if you get a good reseller the price is also cheeper than those non-flexible blockfeeders; the lane width is fixed with blockfeeders so you cannot just put any reel into it.Electronic CL-Feeder have motors for each single feeder, one for advancing and one for peeling the tape; the blockfeeders have 2 steppers as mentioned for 16 feeders (and are rated 3000 EUR+). Also when monitoring the TX path of the Feederblocks (which is responsible for ack'ing and submitting some details about the feeder settings), it doesn't look stable; there are some hickups. The electronic system is not stable (depending on where this happens it might have different issues). An unstable TX feederblock line is not an issue but a careful system doesn't look like that.https://www.eevblog.com/forum/manufacture/mechatronika-mx80/

author: IconicPCB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 10, 2020, 06:43:31 am
content: Quotehttp://mechatronika.com.pl/en/news/01005-components.htmlThe only limiting factor in my experience has been the heighth of components the feeders can process.Otherwise the machine can process up to a hundred or so cut tape feeder positions, loose components from a bin vibratory feeders as well as those pesky block feeders.

author: MR
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 10, 2020, 07:34:39 am
content: Did you really use it with 01005?We have the Mechatronika MX80 as mentioned, it's impossible to use our fully serviced feeders reliably with such small components.Also the bumper for nulling the portal is probably Haribo  material which is very temperature sensitive (for any machine that calls itself Pick and Place machine the manufacturer must get the nulling correctly otherwise they shouldn't exist, and Mechatronika didn't get it right on our machine either).That itself would be a show-stopper for 01005, because you turn off / on the machine and all the component locations might (might! it doesn't necessarily happen all the time) be off. We've seen it off up to 0.5mm - too much for 01005 (and then you can set up all the pick up locations again with the original software).01005 might certainly work with accurate electronic CL-feeders, but drag feeders and 01005? Maybe if you put stripes into the machine but I don't see how you can use that reliably via the box feeders.And whoever's really up for putting pre-peeled stripes into a machine that costs >10K EUR that's not a serious business, we work with reels, and swapping in/out single CL-feeders is no problem and quick. It takes less than 10 seconds to put in a new loaded CL-Feeder.We are working on upgrades for that machine to make it a good machine, but what they deliver is anything beyond that and definitely worse than the cheap chinese machines.Next week we'll meet a company which manufactures vertical actuators (linear motors), we're also about to replace the camera system (because our machine is effectively waiting 6 minutes per hour to stabilise the interlaced video). Really the tech used with Mechatronica machines is over 20 years and absolutely outdated.They aren't even using ballscrews for the gantry. If I would have had the knowledge I have now about pick and place machines I would have never bought Mechatronika, but rather stayed with a used ASM/Siplace, Juki, Yamaha, iPulse, MyData. But it's too late for us we already have Mechatronika and just try to convert it to a fast and useful machine.Our machine was upgraded in 2016/2017, and all the upgrades from Mechatronica were useless (no improvement of anything). The PCBs are dated 2014 now, and whatever they have done is nothing but shit. And they're still using reference picture based optical recognition.For those who don't know about optical recognition only idiots do reference picture based optical recognition.The common way would be to analyse the land patterns (convex hull, locate where the pads are, etc.) and crosscheck them with some reference, but don't compare pictures... eg. for 0402, check the size of the component and analyse the position on the needle; that's how it should be done (if it's done via a bottom camera).You have to drive every single component that might look a little bit different over the camera and make a reference picture. Now do that for 80 components (you're still setting up those templates while everyone else is already done with another machine pick and placing), and if components are a little bit reflecting they might not match the template anymore - and get dropped.We have a working machine now, but it took months to re-implement everything, and I know every weakness of our Mechatronika machine; that's why I can write some detailed information about their products. I could probably write a book about how to manufacture small pick and place machines now.To show that they're different they'd have to release a public statement why they haven't installed the camera which they have invoiced us and which we have paid for; And they're reading this forum too.Their business must be awful bad now and they're milking existing customers with fake upgrades and poor quality service (eg. we have bought a 100 EUR nozzle which was fully clogged with gunk (picture is in the link 2 posts before this one).https://www2.haribo.com/fileadmin/upload/USA/products/haribo/all_products/goldbears.png