Chmt560p4: KiCad toolchain. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: overthere
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: October 23, 2018, 01:20:20 pm
content: Two months ago, I bought an SMD reflow line from charmhigh.I will start with a short review of all components.Disclaimer: I do not have any relationship with charmhigh or others. I write my own oppinion without any cencoring or coloring. Just raw me.About me: I work at a German university as a PhD which does a lot of prototypes that are very small and require high quality. We saved our money to buy this machine.For sure, German machines would have a significant increased quality, however, we can only afford this machine. It costed until it was here like 13 000 Euro.As I benefited from this forum, i want to give something back to the community with this report.CHMT560p4:Pick and Place with 60 Feeder Slots. It's huge and can process any PCB you will need for prototyping and small volume. The construction quality is okay, however it's not up to german standard. The best is clearly the feeders, they come from Japan. The machines language is sometimes difficult to understand and one has a lot of to guess. Placement can go down to 0402, sometimes the resistors are placed with offset, however, solder tention fixes it most of the time. For increased reliability I'd say go for 0603.One great thing is, that they have an human-readable file-format. That allows to write software for it. That's whats this thread is about.Stencil printer: Type 3040Very poor quality. It arrived with corrosion here. Not all fixing holes are tabbed. (Why?!?!?!) Our mechanical department fixed that. Also the PCB holders are not what you expect. I designed my own ones and 3D printed them. If of interest, I can share the drawing and stls. As 3D printing quality is not that nice, I asked the mechanical department to manufacture 8 for me, now it works.For appling the paste, you have to press down really hard. The adjustment nobs have high play/slip and are anything but precision equipement. However, it does the job, even if it's not a pleasure to operate. When the machine arrived, first a lot of oiling was required to get the nows running. I cut myself because some parts of the stencil printer where not deburred. Again: Why?!?!?!Reflow oven: T960W 4.5KWThe machine, when it arrive, one machine leg had suffered and was not rectangular. That needed to be fixed. The cable of the machine is poor quality and had no tention relief. I first needed to replace this. Then some crazy warning for the belt-speed control is printed on it, that the speed control can be broken if turned on at too high speed. That does not make confidence to much. When the machine operates without reflow soldering it smells like crazy. I operate now the machine for a longer time in the hope that smell goes away. There is the option for exchause hauses that I do not have installed yet.Shipping: I decided to go for sea shipping, because it seems significantly cheaper. However, the importer charged me 600 Euro for unloading, then the saving was signficanty less. So, if you choose sea shipping, clearify what it will cost to unload. Tax in Germany is only VAT, so 19%. No import tax.I decided to write my own software interface for it. This software interface I'm putting online. It should enable to generate the production data (DPV) in easy steps. I'm writing it on ubuntu with Netbeans. It will be open source, with the invitation that everybody can contribute and adjust it for their needs. Compiling should be pretty easy, just typing make.When opened, it will ask for a KiCad pos file (not CSV).https://gitlab.com/greenscreenflicker/chmt560p4Currently I'm still working on the software. I will look from time to time here and answer your questions.

author: SMTech
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2018, 05:16:53 pm
content: Quote from: overthere on October 23, 2018, 01:20:20 pmThe printer seems a common design and they look nasty in pictures let alone the flesh, they are also all oddly small, the mechanics of a clamshell printer are very straight forwards to replicate if you have a few tools and parts. Paste pressure would be the same whatever printer you are using, if you feel how hard you have to press is "very hard", that makes it sound like the paste is old, stiff and no good. If you get a roll of paste along the squeegee blade and then pick the blade up, the paste should drop off, a bit like a good cake batter off a spoon.However before you do anything else, fit some ventilation to that oven, flux residues from reflow stink, and are harmful (seriously if you are doing a PhD you should at least be reading the safety datasheet).

author: Raash
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: October 23, 2018, 09:25:38 pm
content: I wonder what's wrong with the printer?You can take a more detailed photo, as I thought to buy one.

author: sarason
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2018, 01:11:07 am
content: My program PCBSynergy currently can read a Kicad_pcb file, as well as write a Charmhigh CHM36VA *.DPV fileIs this of any interest to you? I had a quick check of the CHMT560p4 *.DPV and it seems very similarBy the way PCBSynergy is here:-https://pcbsynergy.comsarason

author: mrpackethead
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2018, 05:26:37 am
content: Quote from: sarason on October 24, 2018, 01:11:07 amHey Andrew, just a note to say thanks for your software. it was really helpful for me while i was getting my stuff going for my machines! Which is now a very capable but very bespoke and speciic system for our environmetn.