Tear down of an Assembleon P&P bottom up camera - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 04, 2019, 07:57:06 pm
content: ModuleSo two years ago I posted a topic about a P&P head I found and since I had a few I tore one apart.https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/tear-down-of-an-assembleonphilips-pp-head/msg1287990/#msg1287990I think that these kind of parts and topics might be particularly interesting for those who want to build a P&P machine them selves some day.So this time I found a bottom up camera from an Assembleon P&P machine and although this does not sound too exciting, it still had some nice features to discover.Lets see, this is a single bottom up camera, firewire protocol, weighing almost 6 kg, chassis from milled steel.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 04, 2019, 07:57:56 pm
content: CameraThe camera itself is a Marlin F-145, IEEE 1394a aka Firewire interface, a Sony ICX205 with a 1392 × 1040 resolution, some nice options only professional camera's offer such as binning and trigger.I tried to get it out but the 1mm hex screws had a bit too much loctite in their holes so I could not get them to move.If someone knows a way to dissolve this loctite I would really like to hear that.The camera connects through firewire to a custom firewire ICU board.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 04, 2019, 07:59:08 pm
content: Firewire boardThe firewire ICU board is probably custom designed and build by Prodrive a company close to Eindhoven for Assembleon.I can not find any information about this board, if some of you who reads this, works there and can get a schematic of this probably EOL board, or at least tell me where to connect and how many and how much the input voltages are, I would appreciate it.What is on this board, on the bottom there are two sets of TI firewire chips TSB12LV23 and TSB41AB2 for two cameras a large flash chip and 8 transistors for the adjustable led output currents.On the top a TI TMS320 processor, a XILINX Spartan FPGA another firewire chip TSB12LV32 host for the output and some DC-DC converters.So my guess is that this board not only interfaces with the two camera's but probably does some graphical overlay on top and controls the led currents to get the maximum contrast with the parts.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 04, 2019, 07:59:56 pm
content: BottomplateOne of the things that are directly visible is that the top of the camera is not closed or covered with glass.Probably (again a guess) so that larger components (throughole perhaps) can be lowered to get more in focus for the camera.Or perhaps so the glass can not get dirty, the machine has to keep on working ofcourse.No glass on top means dust can get in.And for this the unit has some sort of an anti-dust feature in its bottom plate.As you can see on the following pictures, there is a pressurized air input that leads to a row of holes, blowing clean air across the lens and bottom plate.Nice.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 04, 2019, 08:01:03 pm
content: LightWith a solid enclosure and 16 cm distance between the camera lens to the object it can get pretty dark for the camera.Assembleon made three different light stages, to get a good as possible ambient light source preventing shining in the camera and preventing reflections, thus increasing contrast.One set of four powerleds are on the bottom shining against the bottom plate reflecting the light up (C), one half way through holes in the side of the cilinder (B) and just under the top a ring of leds to light the object from the side (A).The bottom and side leds are red Lumileds Luxeon powerleds with 44Lm each, total 4 on the bottom, 4 in the middle.The ring consists of 60+ small red leds with a matt polycarbonate diffusor ring, creating an evenly distributed circle of light.I hope you liked this small teardown, if some of you also have interesting P&P parts lying around, please show them