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Messages - xinort

2
Tools of the trade / Re: A ginuae pig once again. I Just bought a new pick and pl
@Andy123

Yes, I bought it off of Aliexpress, it was $4880 shipped.

It didn't come with any spare parts. I'd purchased the spare parts kit from neoden when I'd bought my TM220a and I haven't yet needed to use any parts out of the kit.

This reminds me of one other benefit I don't think I've mentioned which is that on the chmt36 the nozzles are the Juki type. They are quick connect/disconnect where on the TM220a we have to use 2 wrenches (included) to change the nozzle. They are also widely available on Aliexpress and ebay.

I'm hoping to make a video of the new machine in action. I'll post a link here when I get it posted.
3
Tools of the trade / Re: A ginuae pig once again. I Just bought a new pick and pl
I've received the machine and all around I'm happy with it. There are many positives and a couple negatives. The big negative is I didn't get the plate that replaces the screws that I'd mentioned in my previous post. I received one with those stupid screws. That said it doesn't seem to bind like the TM220 does. They fixed the right angle edge on the incoming portion of the feeder which seems to stop it from binding. I'm waiting to hear back from the manufacturer I'm hoping they will send me the plate. I was surprised to find a slot in the top of the machine that is made for the empty tape to go into and it exits either on the left hand side or below the machine. This is a nice improvement since the tape never goes under the board as it does with the tm220. The user interface is MUCH nicer than the TM220. Not just because it's bigger and full color. There are several small improvements in the user interface and a bunch of functionality that isn't in the tm220. One that I really like is you can select a part to start from. With the tm220 if we have to stop the board in the middle of the run for any reason there is no way for us to continue (barring letting the machine beep at full blast for the duration of resolving the problem such as change out a reel etc). With the CHMT36 you just enter the component number and it goes about it's business.

One thing that kind of caught me off guard is the IC tray. It's stacks 30-37. Each stack is individual and the machine goes back to that same location each time it needs that part. The TM220 has functionality where it will pick up the part at ic tray 1 then next time it needs the same part it goes to tray 2 and so on. I use this functionality all the time with the tm220 when doing panelized boards. The benefit of having individual stacks is that you can have different parts. Which will also come in handy. I've experimented with making a tube feeder for these IC trays. I made a plastic insert that goes in the IC tray which has a slot for the IC's to sit in. When the machine grabs one a vibration motor causes the next one to drop into place. It worked surprisingly well so I'm working on making a more permanent solution out of aluminum. With this improvement I'll get the best of both worlds since we won't have to manually place the part in the IC trays anymore and will be able to potentially have 8 IC tubes of parts. I started off being inspired by this guys solution : http://www.briandorey.com/post/DIY-Pick ... eeder.aspx

@az1324
I definitely looked into the SMT50 but didn't feel all that confident about the company itself. It seems like they are a very small operation and that made me nervous. Plus I currently only place larger components with 0805 being the smallest part and mostly SOIC and TSOC and SOT-23-5's. Vision would be nice but it's not really needed for my application.

All in all I think the CHMT36 machine is definitely an improvement over the TM220-240 machines.
5
Tools of the trade / A ginuae pig once again. I Just bought a new pick and place
A few years ago I was one of the first people in the US to buy the TM220 pick and place machine. There is no doubt it has served me well over the years. However we spend quite a bit of time switching out component reels since we only have 15 reel locations to work with on the TM220. Some boards we produce have to run through more than one program with full reel changes in between. Naturally I first looked to the tm220's big brother the TM240. However I found the CHMT36 which at first sight appeared to be a clone of the TM240. On closer inspection I discovered that it seems to have several improvements. It has a larger touch screen and a much more aesthetic user interface. It appears they have really taken a close look at the TM240 and figured out ways to improve it. Some of the changes are simple things like the on/off switch is on the side at the front instead of in the back. To more innovative changes such as the steel plate covering where the tape exits the feeder as opposed to the screws (that regularly make my tm220 growl at me). Further that plate is angled down, I imagine this will help with the tape constantly getting in the way when changing out the pcbs. Charmhigh is the manufacture and it appears they have been making CNC machines for years. I've just order my machine and I feel just like I do when I purchased the TM220. It's a lot of money and it feels risky. But I'm excited, if it performs as well as the TM220 has I will certainly be happy with my purchase. As a side note I believe the CHMT36 uses the same csv file format as the TM220 and TM240 machines so the script I wrote (and the significant improvements made on it by others) will be useful with this new machine. I hope to have it in the next week or so. I'll let you all know how it goes!
6
Tools of the trade / Re: Eagle export script for TM220A pick and place machine
Weird, for me your ulp output has all the rotation values 180 degrees off. I use both 5.11 and 6.x versions of eagle and for me both have the orientation opposite of what your getting. I'll attach a pic, both of those components have a angle value of 90. The generated output puts them at 0 rotation which puts pin 1 at the top of the board (back of the machine). Do you (or Ian) get a different value when the component is in that same orientation?

Easy enough for me to change, but interesting that we're getting different values. I like how it's setup otherwise it will definitely make things easier.
8
Tools of the trade / Re: Eagle export script for TM220A pick and place machine
It's interesting that your rotation values from eagle are different then mine. Or more likely I've just misunderstood how they do it. For me the left side of the board (when viewing in eagle) is 0 and rotates counterclockwise which corresponds to -90 on the TM220a. Seems what your doing is opposite of what I am doing.

One thing I've noticed is that while most of the time it's correct, many times my rotation values aren't right. I think it comes down to the origin of the component in eagle is different then what it is in the tape. Regardless I like your improvements on the script, I'll give it a go next time I need to create a config file.
9
Tools of the trade / Re: High speed Pick & Place for $3600
I found out about a nice feature. Sometimes you need to stop half way through a board and it seems the machine doesn't have a way to start where it left off. However there is, you load the config file and hit the F1 key, then you enter the component number to start at and hit enter and it will start at that component.
10
Tools of the trade / Re: High speed Pick & Place for $3600
>On the PCB origin command, there are two trailing commas. These are apparently required. Is this true?

I don't think they are required but they are helpful in some CSV editors.

>Angles must -180 to 180 clockwise; zero orientation is towards stack #15 (away from the operator). Is this correct?

Yes that is correct.

>The "tape skip" parameter (7th parameter for a component row) is unclear to me. It looks like an option to move the pick-up position by the "tape feed" distance (instead of pulling the tape by that distance). The plug-in now only sets the tape skip option on stack #0 (the "tray feeder"). Is this correct?

If the skip is set to 1 the component will be skipped and won't be placed.

>If you have the same nozzle in both heads, is it ok to pick up the same part with head 1 and head 2 in sequence? This plug-in assumes that it is. For example, if you have 8 resistors of 10k on the PCB and the reel is at stack position 3, is it ok to pick up two 10k resistors from the same reel (on head 1 and head 2)?

Yes that will work. The machine isn't aware of what nozzles are installed. If the config file has consecutive components one with head 1 and the next with head 2 it will pick up both before moving to place them.

-Xinort
11
Tools of the trade / Re: High speed Pick & Place for $3600
One thing that has helped me with the part dropping off is really getting the Stack Offset settings right. It's kind of a hassle since (at least on mine) the laser pointer is not active when changing the stack offset values and also the joystick doesn't work you need to change the x,y values then hit the joystick and it will move to the new location. A bit of eye balling and trial and error is required but has resolved our issues. Also use the NEEDLE button in the manual tab to be sure you have the part lined up right in the holder (that said we usually just eyeball it and the machine usually gets it right. FWIW we do what we can to use both heads when we can and haven't noticed any drops due to using both.

In regards to production rate, it can pump out up to 6000 components an hour. I see no reason I couldn't produce a couple thousand boards a day if the demand was there.

For language you should be able to change it for the "session" by changing the Language setting in the settings panel to 1 (it's the first one listed in the settings in case it's in Chinese), you'll need to do it every time you start the machine unfortunately.
12
Tools of the trade / Re: Eagle export script for TM220A pick and place machine
Very cool! I will definitely be using this soon.

I'm not even certain that we need to set the height on most components. If you look at the wiki page with the nozzle information they'd said "L: IC size more than 10*10mm, need to setup the height of component " I'd gone through the datasheets and set the heights anyway but I set 0.0 height as a test and it worked without any height value.  That said I continue to just put in the height info, but I'm curious if it's only needed when using the L nozzle.
13
Tools of the trade / Re: High speed Pick & Place for $3600
The files are on Drews FTP server if someone wants to get them on dropbox or wherever that would be great. The file stalled at first and I don't have access to resume or delete so I re-uploaded with another file name. The first one won't unzip since it's only a partial file. Enjoy.
15
Tools of the trade / Re: High speed Pick & Place for $3600
Yes, a tool is included with the machine that works with Altium/Protel. I use eagle so I haven't used it or know exactly how it works. One of the training videos shows how it's done albeit in Chinese. Anyone know of a good site to upload/share large files? I tried a couple and they are all a pita or limit file size. All the training videos combined are nearly a gig.

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