Excellent work, I can't wait until its 100% finished. There are two reasons I haven't bought a TM240, firstly the feeders are not removable so I would have to stack it twice or buy two machines, at least five of my boards have 50+ SMT components in the BOM. Second, lack of vision system - I do not want to have to closely examine each board and line up components that are misplaced; I know that most straighten up on reflow but my experience is that some don't. This machine seems to address both shortcomings.
By way of suggestions I would like to ask for very good support and ease of use with Cadsoft Eagle; this machine is at a price point where many of your customers will be using this program rather than Protel and if you make it easy for them it will be talked about on the forums and should lead to many extra sales - I would be your first one ;-)
You create a reel set in the ULP, which specifys the reel index 0, being the front tray, 1+ being the reels, a height for the part, then a mm amount to move the part in the feeder, for a 0603 i used 0.5 height and 4mm move.
Ah, now I get it. I've downloaded the ULP and had a quick look at it along with the relevant forum posts, looks great - can even add extra reels for TM-240 but probably need a portrait monitor to view them all.
I've been using the DP-TM220A.ulp from the forum (With a couple of changes for attribute checks and ignoring test pads, jumpers etc) it generates two csv's currently with all the parts as top/bottom, but you can easily change that so its multiple CSV's or just hand edit later. You could even add an attribute that defines which reel set/run the component is in.
Sounds like the DP-TM220A.ulp will do everything I need, I'll download it and have a play. So it simply produces a csv coordinate file and the reel set is chosen by the TM-240 rather than the Eagle Ulp?
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I've got my TM220a loaded with a strip of 0608's that are not on a reel, digikey almost give you enough leader, but not quite so you either add a paper strip+tape leader or loose some components. you can manually hold back the tape til its long enough, or extend it.
Looks like I will be fine with cut strips then :-) I'll just extend the tape leader as you suggest, I'd rather not loose components as some of them are precision resistors at 50 cents each, don't want to be throwing away ten or more of those each time!
Yes, I'd agree that making all of the feeders removable as a block would be a great feature - has anyone suggested this to Neoden? It's a missed opportunity to sell some additional feeders to almost every user. My solution will probably be to buy a second machine, that way I could fully stuff boards without having to stop the job half way and change components on all of the feeders. It would also give me a backup if one machine goes down. I'd prefer the multiple feeder option though.....
Can any users help? I'm seriously considering buying a TM-240, but the boards that I build have around 50 different value components - mostly 1206 or 805 and almost all are on 8mm tapes. At present I have 10 different boards, so probably 200-300 different components in total and it would be too expensive to buy all of the components on reels - I currently buy them on strips of 100 to 500 and only use four or five reels for more common values which I'd leave permanently in place. I do small runs of between 10 and twenty boards at a time. Because there are a maximum of 28 feeders I'd have to do a run of boards then swap out components on the feeders and do a second run.
Can 8mm strips of 100 components be loaded and fed ok? I realize that the clear cover tape could be an issue as it wont be long enough to wrap back onto take up reels, but I'd know how many components it would use per run so could just remove the correct length prior to starting up the placing operation. Does this sound possible?
Also, I use Cadsoft Eagle for PCB design; can anyone using the Eagle script let me know if it works ok with the TM-240 and if I could spit it into two operations as proposed?
This really is a superb Gerber viewer, been using it for a month or so now and its excellent, the finished boards I've got from fab house look identical to the previews :-)
Only thing I've noticed is that it doesn't show irregular shape pcb's correctly, I have a rectangular pcb with a semicircle cut out of it to clear a rotary switch on a lower board, it just renders it as a rectangular board. I can put the gerbers up if needed. Is it possible to fix? I'm using the current release 20131110T0146, 64bit version.
Sadly I don't think I have the programming skill to get it up and running myself. Surprised that you don't use one, for anything 3D they are almost essential - I'd happily lend you mine to have a play with but unfortunately I've got a load of 3d drafting to do over the next few months so can't afford to be without it. You basically use it with the left hand and the mouse with right hand, it is a joystick that also rotates and moves up and down and is very easy and intuitive to use.
Lack of support for it won't stop me from using grbv, absolutely superb and even better now I've read the manual! Justfound the different skins available with the function keys :-)
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