High speed Pick & Place for $3600

[ian]

An update on my attempt to buy them (still time to get out if Xinort's experience is troubling). I keep missing the company over QQ> I did send a email with all the info, but QQ seems to be the only thing they answer.

[TrevorWhite]

What happens if the machine goes faulty or needs a part replacing? Is that the end of its use? Can they be fixed?

The machine looks great.

[sam512bb]

Good day All,

For those that might be interested, here are some pics of the (older) Commercial Juki/Zevatech that I recently purchased. It is a sizeable unit and it took two good size crates to transport the machine and the associated accessories to me... 2 crates weighing 1700 lbs total and were roughly 50" square x 5' high... Crating was not cheap and was actually more than the entire transport cost! I also included a picture of the manuals... about 10 of them ranging from training, parts, user,operating, etc... Although the original owner trained me on the unit, there is a lot to know and given how many manuals there are... I suspect I will be reading for quite a while...

Cheers,

Sam

[bearmos]

that's all pretty exciting - hopefully you''ll have the PnP up and running in your own shop quickly! It's great to have all the manuals available with the machine - I'm sure they'll come in handy.

[sam512bb]

that's all pretty exciting - hopefully you''ll have the PnP up and running in your own shop quickly! It's great to have all the manuals available with the machine - I'm sure they'll come in handy.

Good day Bearmos,

Indeed, it is pretty exciting... and scary too in a way, as there is a lot of know... Hopefully my training was absorbed. Luckily the original owner, who I purchased the unit from, has offered to provide me remote setup assistance/training as I need. This is a huge help and really reflects the character of the owner. A true gentleman in all sense of the word. Sadly it will be several weeks before I am ready to "jump" in, as I have a lot of other stuff on the go... plus I have yet to get my reflow and stencil printer sorted. However, there is certainly something empowering knowing that I can now do a whole lot more myself ... like prototyping my BGA designs... I no longer have to bug my CM for a favor to mount a few BGAs to my test boards... or making a number of prototypes rather quickly (if one ignores the setup effort) and to a much higher level... Lastly, there is the entertainment value... For some unknown reason to me I find there is something entertaining/mesmorizing of watching a CNC machine working away :)

Cheers,

Sam

[TrevorWhite]

Is there any news on what happened if a part breaks on these machines? I am really interested in them but if something goes wrong is there any way of getting spares for it? I think it is a really important aspect of buying one of these machines.

[xinort]

Another quick update. I was quite frustrated when I posted my last message. My worker had seen the post and laughed at my statement that it would have been faster then by hand. In reality I just had to put more time into the build then usual. I think you are all right about this being normal pains of learning new equipment. The fact that I have no manual and no one else yet able to share their experiences has made it tough. I spent the weekend working to get things going and have had some success. Tape with bigger parts on it have a space between each part on the backside (such as the bigger tantalum capacitors. On the machine there is a 90 degree lip right before the tape enters the tape holder. The gap on the back side of the tape between the components was getting snagged on that 90 deg. lip which would stop the machine from being able to advance the tape. What I did was take a bent piece of mylar and attached it to the machine so that the tape can't get get stuck. It seems to have resolved that problem (picture attached)

I still can't get the vacuum sensor mode to work 100% although it does work better. I changed the height of some of the components and adjusted the pick up offset. That said I've just been using the machine with the vsensor feature turned off. So the machine doesn't know if it's picked up a part or not but it'a doing pretty good and not missing many that we have to place by hand. I've tried going slower and oddly it seems to work best on the fastest speed. Going slowthe part seems more likely to fall off. I'm wondering if there is a problem with the vacuum pump, as it can only hold onto the parts for a couple seconds. It doesn't seem to matter if it's an 0805 or a bigger component.

On a positive note, I've modified the mount-smd ulp script for eagle. I've made it so that it generates a nearly complete config file that the TM220A and TM240A can use directly. It ouputs the xy location of the parts in mm with two decimals, rotation, component reference and the comment is filled with the value of the component and the package name. Rotation was a bit tricky since eagle has 0-359 rotation values starting on the left side of the board and rotates counterclockwise whereas the machine needs a rotation value between -180 and +180 with 0 at the "top" of the board (back of the machine). It rotates clockwise in the positive values and ccw in the negative. A few lines of code has it squared away. This has sped up setting up the boards tremendously. My first one I hand wrote everything from the mount-smd.ulp output and it was quite time consuming. With the output from the attached ulp all you need to do is fill in the stack that the part is located at and the height of the component. It might just work from there however you can modify the file further to fine tune things. All components are by default set to use head 1, no offset on the part pickup location and use standard values for the feed settings. File is attached hope this helps someone out there.

-Dan

[ian]

Thanks for the ulp and update. Mine will hopefully be here this week, though it shipped right before New Year so I didn't get any tracking info. It will be a surprise when it arrives :)

Is there any news on what happened if a part breaks on these machines? I am really interested in them but if something goes wrong is there any way of getting spares for it? I think it is a really important aspect of buying one of these machines.

The manufacturer sold xinort extra parts and has been communicative with him, I assume they would supply replacement parts as long as they are around. This is probably not the ideal tool if you're concerned about spare parts and longevity though.

[TrevorWhite]

Thanks for the update.

With regard to reliability it is a good point that you can not actually really tell how long the company will be around for. But if they have designed it well then I would hope it is made from common building blocks. It would be nice to know if there is anything 'special' to the machine.

I think for the money it needs to have some build quality. When you get your machine will you be doing a whole series of videos about it?

Trev

[ian]

At least one video, depends on how it goes I suppose :)

[richardw]

I'm very interested in the TM220A, I'm getting close to the point that I need to increase my manufacturing capabilities, I'm currently using a completely manual pick and place, really basic but better than using tweezers by hand: abacom-tech ezPick

I've looked over this page:
TM220A_Pick_and_Place_resources
I see some committed buyers but what is the latest plan to get some of these imported to the US?

Also anyone have any experience or opinions on this machine:
Madell Technology SM-100
it's $4850 has some automatic placement, but its mostly semi auto, needs some manual assistance since it doesn't have computer vision, it does have a camera and has a cool split view mode for things like BGA alignment, you can watch the video on their website for a better idea... it is at least shipped from the US and seems like the quality / reliability is really good.... any input anyone has would be greatly appreciated to help in the decision making process.

Thanks.

[ian]

I have made contact with the manufacturer, but then the Chinese New Year hit and nobody is on QQ. I expect communication will resume next monday.

[ian]

I just got a call from the customs office for clarification of the item tariff code. My TM220A could be here tonight, probably tomorrow.

[xinort]

Hi All,

I got some good news. Today we discovered a small piece of foam stuck in the head, once removed the machine is now working even with the vsensor feature turned on. Now the only problem I'm facing is I have .01uf 0805 caps that are in the plastic tape, the machine doesn't do that great advancing this type of tape as it gets bound up when being pushed out the exit of the tape holder. A slight bit of pull on during the build and it works but I've got a reel of the same part in the normal paper tape on the way and that problem will be resolved. The machine is working very well.

I'm not certain but there maybe a mistake in the ULP file I'd uploaded. The 90 degree to 179 might not be calculating right. I'm not sure if I accidentally used an old version when I generated a config file for a recent board or if there is indeed a mistake in the file I uploaded. I'll look it over and update the file if needed.

Ian, expect one big ole plywood box. One thing is for sure it's very well packaged. I'd been contacted by customs as well. The agent I spoke with didn't seem to get what it was despite me describing it in several ways. In the end he seemed convinced it was a desktop computer and I wasn't going to argue with him. I received the duty invoice from fedex and to my surprise $0 was due. Don't know how or if another bill will come but I'm not complaining.

-Xinort

[bearmos]

excellent news, xinort - i'm really glad you got things to working.