[quote author="TomKeddie"]This thread seems to have gone quiet, I'm still very interested.[/quote]
Likewise. But I think that Ian has been / is traveling.
Ian - I had asked NeoDen about the cost of the T-962A SMT reflow oven. They quoted US $689, which included shipping to Canada. I find that to be high, compared to the about $500 cost (including shipping) if I were to purchase it from eBay. This is obviously a case where price negotiation is important.
For that matter, Ian, don't you have a T-962A oven? I can't tell from the photos that you've published, but it sure looks similar to what I see on the NeoDen website. If you *do* have a T-962A or similar oven, what did it cost you?
Anyway, I also am very interested if anything comes of this group purchase.
[quote author="ammsolutions"]Yep - Agree, eyeballing is what we do too.. As for language - I have the setting, but changing it has no effect ! .. is there something I am doing wrong ? - In fact, mine is 1 by default and that is Chinese .. Maybe you guys have different firmware, but I can't find it. [/quote]
Ian had said that you need to go into the settings menu, set the language to 0, then go to the main page and load a pick-and-place file. That's when the language changes.
Note that the language reverts back to its default (Chinese in your case) everytime the machine is powered-up.
Ian or myself can put you in touch with the factory - talk to them about the language issue. They *might* give you the password to make the settings permanent.
[quote author="Chankster"]It becomes slightly less impressive when you realize that there's an external motion capture system.[/quote]
Yeah - I figured that. Doesn't matter, though. I *still* think that is completely amazing.
There are just so many different problems to be solved:
1) making the quad-rotors stable all by themselves (lots of people are doing this now).
2) Remote control of the quad-rotors (in conjunction with the above stability problems).
3) Balancing the pendulum on the quad-rotor. Absolutely NOT easy!
4) Doing the math at a rate of 50 times per second to calculate the landing position of the falling / turning rod.
I consider myself to pretty smart and I'm darned sure that I would have a very difficult time with all of the above. I'm not even sure that I would try.
Someone on the list suggested that it might be a hoax (someone having some CGI fun) but one of the long-time list members has history with the grad-student supervisor / prof (Sean built the prof's first quad-copter electronics package) and is absolutely confident that what is shown is completely real and un-touched.
At the risk of repeating myself, I find it to be utterly amazing.
[quote author="Sleepwalker3"]Also re. editing the files, it will depend on lot on whether it's some kind of Binary format or text related as to how you tackle it and that could vary between products. You may not realise that Ultraedit has had Scripting for some time, not just Macros, so worth checking that out, especially when combined with Regular Expressions. Overall though if I was doing it myself I'd probably use a proper programming language like PowerBasic, but that's just me.[/quote]
Like most CNC formats, this uses human-readable ASCII data as was detailed in an earlier message.
And, yes, I mentioned the possibility of using either TSE or UltraEdit specifically because of the extremely powerful macro *and* scripting capability that both packages offer. I realize that there are * MANY * scripting languages now available and I had briefly considered learning Perl to accomplish what I want. I do have the luxury of having spent much time with the very early macro language for the predecessor to the current version of TSE. Alas - that was 15 or 20 years ago - and I have done very little such work since then.
I ordered a TM240A (the larger machine) and the total cost (including shipping to Edmonton, Canada) was US $5071. The ship cost was $595, which was considerably higher than what I had expected, based on Ian's experience. But we went for it anyway.
I am indeed hoping to use this in a production environment, for small runs of 10 to 25 panels at a time. Most of my SMT boards are tiny, so each panel has anywhere from 6 to 12 boards. I'm now ordering paste stencils from the PCB supplier - they are supplying stainless-steel stencils for US $50. I did ask if they can drop that price any - for my most recent PCB order (late last week), they dropped the stencil cost down to US $45. I'm not going to push them any harder - I think that $45 is a reasonable price to pay for stainless.
I have heard that Seeed Studio will be offering a stencil service with their boards - I may have to check that out as well.
I'm hoping that my machine arrives late this coming week or early next. I'm currently looking at using one of my text editors (TSE or UltraEdit) to see if I can automate converting the PnP placement data from my CAD package into the format that the TM240A wants to see. But its been literally * YEARS * since I did any scripting with the macro language - I used to be pretty good at it but I'll be starting from scratch again. I'll most likely start with TSE (from http://http://www.semware.com ) - I still use a heavily-customized version of Qedit (very, very early version of TSE - now know as TSE Junior) as my daily editor and I recall that it was fairly easy to make the macro language do what I wanted.
I still think that this machine will make a fine production machine. Do recall that all of the early commercial PnP machines were based on dead-reckoning and did not have vision assistance. Quite frankly, I think that the low cost PnP machines that do have vision are using the vision system to compensate for poor mechanical accuracy. These machines without vision will have to be darned accurate - they have no choice if they are to be usable. Certainly, the specifications do state that these machines are darned accurate - far more so than the early Zevatech machine that I worked on 15 or 20 years ago. I never did see the Zevatech machine operating but its owners certainly made a lot of money from that machine - they were a tiny contract manufacturer here in Edmonton and that machine was the central part of their business. But I flat out guarantee that it was not as accurate as the specifications of this machine.
Whether or not this machine meets its specifications is something that I am quite looking forward to finding out. <Grin>.
Well, I just now tried to get PnP data from my CAD package: CADint. The early version that I'm using has PnP data for several different formats: My Data, Panasonic, SPEA (whatever that is) and a couple of others. But the format that seems to be the closest to what this machine needs is a format that they call "Siemens Simple". Its going to take some massaging to make it work but its already pretty close. Here is a sample from one of my older SMD boards:
The first field is the component number (not ID, just a sequential number from 1 to n), then a blank field, then the X location, then the Y location (both in mm), the rotation from 0 to 359 degrees, another blank field, the component ID, and finally a field that is populated with a zero. The X and Y locations are referenced to the lower left corner of the board.
Its useful that the PnP data is already in metric format - it means that I don't have to convert from Imperial measurements (inches and fractions of inches). I checked the location of a couple of dozen components - the center appears to be the exact geometric center of the silk-screen legend. I suppose that it could be the geometric center of the pads as well - I won't know until I look at a board that has a component with asymmetrical lands. But for now, the location data is exactly perfect.
So: the first thing that I need to do is to find out what the machine considers to be zero rotation. Is Zero rotation considered to be the component as it sits in the carrier tape? Seems logical but I need to find out. Ian - do you know?
I guess that I also need to find someone who is competent with a scripting language such as Perl. Me - I'm not even vaguely competent - its just not anything that I normally need to do.
What I'd like to wind up with is a utility that would strip out the extraneous data from the file, put a comment symbol before the component ID, and convert the rotation into the plus minus 180 degrees that the machine wants. A real bonus would be to also sort the file so that travel time is minimized.
I've been dealing with someone named Mia from the company that manufactures the machine. I asked her about sending a PCB with matching config file - she says "No Problem".
I had also asked about panelization. Here is her reply (copy and paste):
There's a setting colume for panel setup in the programming file as below, one instruction (for example: 65535, 3, 10, 0) stands for one jointed board. If you got jointed boards, no matter how the arrangement are between the boards, start from the second board (no need to set panel setup for first board), you need to setup the panel instruction. 65535 and 3 means panel setup instruction, keep it identical for all jointed boards, X, Y means the Origin for the jointed board.
Panel setup
Panelized boards command=3 % Command X Y 65535 3 10 0
Let me know if my explaination above is not clear enough. Thanks.
<end of copy>
I'll ask her for clarification - the above config line looks good for a panel consisting to two boards. But I want to know how to do an array of n X nn (example: 2 x 3). Its just not clear to me yet.
Or: do you have multiple panel commands, each specifying the origin of a particular board in the panel? That actually sort of makes sense.
[quote author="royco"] Im also preparing a short script to quickly try it out. I use Diptrace so I cant use the ULP for Eagle.[/quote]
Yeah - I use something called "CADint" - the current incarnation of the old CAD package that I still use: EE Designer II. Alas - neither EE Designer II or CADint understands Eagle ULP files <grin>.
I am really quite curious about the copy of Altium that the manufacturer says comes with the machine - is this a license that Altium knows about and sanctions or is it one of those things that you don't want to be caught using?
I used to have an engineer from Switzerland working with us - he was a grad fresh out of engineering school and came to get some real "hands-on" experience with a small company. He stayed with us for a little less than 3 years and I miss him dearly. One of the smartest people that I've ever had the pleasure of working with.
Anyway, the school he trained at (in Switzerland) had an arrangement with Altium whereupon the students could purchase their own licenses very inexpensively. As a result, Marcel had his own license of Altium with him when he came to work with us - and he *really* liked it. He showed me a bunch of things that he thought were pretty cool and I got to play with his copy off and on for a couple of years.
But - I never got comfortable with it and have stayed with EE Designer II / CADint - just because its easier to stay with something that I know as opposed to having to learn a new package from scratch. I even turned down a real sweetheart of a deal - I'm part of Microchip's "Design Partner" program and Microchip had arranged a one-time purchase of Altium for every design seat at Microchip *and* any of the Design Partners who wanted to purchase licenses at a very significant discount. But it was still going to be something like 10 grand for 4 seats, so I passed on the deal. Its not that it was a bad deal (it was a pretty good deal) but the annual maintenance fees would have been just killer. Nope - no discount on maintenance. And - Altium wouldn't let us cheat by purchasing maintenance for only a single seat - its an all or nothing affair.
So I turned down the offer.
Anyway, I'd be interested in learning how you approach generating your config files - hopefully, I can learn from the approach that you use and adapt it to my particular situation. And, of course, I'll post whatever I come up with.
We sent our payment for the '240A machine via wire transfer yesterday. Shipping was higher than I expected - US $595 to Canada for the large machine. I had hoped for shipping to be in the $400 range.
But we paid it - I think the machine is a bargain for the price.
Question for Ian - I don't know if its too late, but would the manufacturer consider sending a bare PCB with matching PnP file so that we can see the machine in operation when we get it? Plus - being able to match up a physical PCB to the file contents would make generating our own files easier in the beginning.
Another question: how do we set up for panels of multiple identical boards? The first panel that I want to run through the machine is an array of 6 identical boards in a 2 x 3 arrangement.
[quote author="Sjaak"]Does someone have more info about the internals of the machine? I can imagine you don't wnat to disassemble a 4000$ machine you are depending on..[/quote]
I'm certainly planning to see what is inside the head. I would imagine that the rest of the machine is fairly standard in terms of CNC stuff - steppers driving belts that move the gantry and head around. And - popping the bottom cover off to look at the stepper drivers and power supply should be fairly easy.
But I suspect the real magic is inside the head.
I'll take photos and such - and would very much like to see and hear about what others discover about their machines.
I don't know if this helps, but Box.com and Dell are offering a free 50GB cloud storage solution. No cost and the 50GB is free for life (or however box.com is around). The only downside is that maximum file size is 250MB.
My thought would be to upload the videos to your account on box.com, then publish the link that they give you so that others can download the videos.
Just chatting with my business partner this morning and he is questioning my choice of the small machine. So: I should ask if you can get the price on the larger machine - there is a distinct possibility that will be the machine for me.
And - I hope that both you and xinort are able to keep us updated on your adventures with your machines. I'm really quite envious and very much looking forward to having a machine of my own to begin learning.
The Red connector in your photo is a standard North-American air fitting and is known as a Milton "M" connector. I am completely unfamiliar with the Asian connector that your unit came with.
I have a couple of suggestions. The easiest method is to head to a supplier with the dispenser in hand and see if they have a connector that will thread into the back of the dispenser. Another option is to cut the existing air hose and install a barbed 1/4" fitting (with a hose clamp) - the 1/4" threaded portion then threads into the air fitting of your choice.
Because I work with air fittings all the time, I have the most common tapered taps and dies (10-32, 1/8" NPT, 1/4" NPT, 3/8" NPT, 1/2" NPT and also have 3/4" NPT taps (but not dies). My usual fix is to silver-solder an appropriate fitting into the fitting that I can't match - its very professional-looking and rock-solid reliable. But I've even been known to drill out, then re-tap the threads for the next larger NPT size.
I'd like to jump in on this one as well. I don't need a solder-paste dispenser system (got 2 already) but I'd be up for things like the hot plate / preheater and perhaps a small to medium size reflow oven. I'd have to look at what else would be readily available before deciding on other items.
Customs should be fairly easy - if the package is shipped via FedEx, they usually do the customs stuff for us (at least for shipments to and from the USA into Canada). If not, we have a customs broker set up to handle truck freight and UPS shipments - they have also handled PCB shipments from China to us so there should be no problems.
Payment via PayPal or Wire Transfer is easy for us. Wire transfer is especially easy and relatively inexpensive if the funds are in US dollars.
