Can anyone summarise the status of OpenPnP right now? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: alanambrose
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2021, 09:46:51 am
content: As the title saysHow good is it? How well maintained is it? Is the Java code good? How well used is it? Are there any good alternatives?I'm thinking maybe OpenPNP could be a possibility for an old range of UK-based PnP machines.TIA, Alan

author: spanner888
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2021, 04:57:40 am
content: It is very actively maintained. The code has undergone several revisions to improve structure and flexibility and these are often preceded by extensive discussion.It is also actively used by many hobbyists as well as many small run businesses and also there have been quite a few retrofits of a wide variety of old PNP machines undertaken and often documented.The main forumhttps://groups.google.com/g/openpnphas almost 1400 members and is very active.

author: Styno
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2021, 06:51:08 am
content: Just a quick Google and I see someone using the same cheap (as in $25 second hand) Dima feeders as we have on our Dima Optimat. The electric feeder piston drives the feeder with more control than our pneumatic cylinders which will help tremendously with parts bouncing out of the tape.

author: jmelson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2021, 03:41:56 pm
content: Wow, 2 parts every 25 seconds. Correcting for 50% speed, that would be one part every 6 seconds. That's 600 PPH.The last job I did on my Quad QSA30 (running at 60%) was doing 2450 PPH, and the feeder placement was not optimized at all. I've done over 4000 PPH with a better feeder arrangement.So, I was doing one side of a board with 117 components in 172 seconds, and thet includes the conveyor time, fiducial detection time, nozzle changes, etc. That board would take over 11 minutes per board! (If you do a big board with no nozzle changes it goes even faster.)Jon

author: Rat_Patrol
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2021, 05:42:09 pm
content: Quote from: jmelson on May 20, 2021, 03:41:56 pmSpeed may or may not be an issue, depending on your requirements.I looked into an OpenPnP setup, but since it is DIY and the cost was up there anyway, I'm using a Charmhigh 48VB. Their software is hot garbage, but someone who can run scripts could make their own easily. I run the same boards all the time, so I slug through it and get a good file and then just start building boards.

author: doppelgrau
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2021, 10:32:16 am
content: Quote from: alanambrose on May 19, 2021, 09:46:51 amIt depends how you define "good". With top and bottom vision you can get good accuracy, as a hobbyist I find the usability good, flexible with the used feeders (from commercial tape feeders to loose part feeders based on vision), but it is not perfect:The error handling (at least in the currently developed 2.0 version) has room for improvement.(E.g. collecting the errors and let the operator fix all of them in the end of the job)Not really optimized for speed. And I do not mean that the code is that slow, but especially in mutli nozzle setups there are currently no optimizations regarding pick/place order to reduce travel. Also not multiple cameras supported e.g. for fixing bottom vision on all nozzles at the same time. That doesn't mean that it's awfully slow with the right feeders, but somewhere in the 4 digits seems currently a limit.Much development. Even if the developers take great care not to break things, new features changes the GUI => if you update the software a bit of time should be expected to learn the changes.The documentation in thewikiis not bad, but of course could be better.Some behavior is not 100% intuitive. e.g. if you change the location of a feeder and move the camera to the "pick location" the old location ist used, since the location is usually updated during the feed-operation ...Quote from: alanambrose on May 19, 2021, 09:46:51 amWould say well maintained and the code is good. Not perfect, but good. (Took me a bit to get the used patterns, but got some patches/PR integrated)Quote from: alanambrose on May 19, 2021, 09:46:51 amThe only real alternative I know of is the software from the liteplacer. Not used myself, but from all what I red a bit easier to set up, but way less powerful.Quote from: alanambrose on May 19, 2021, 09:46:51 amYou would not be the first one retrofitting an existing PnP with OpenPnP.