Neoden 4 pick and place

[elmood]

Hey folks,

I've been following this thread with interest, and actually have gone ahead and ordered the Neoden 4 machine with oven and stencil printer. The comments from TheSteve have been useful... thank you for it... I'll be asking the factory specifically about the problems you described. Even though this is a "cheap" machine, I still figure it's okay to be picky when spending this kind of money.

Please keep the info and pictures coming as I'm sure there are a lot of people interested. More details on the 5mm limitation would be cool too... it wasn't off-putting for me because we don't use SMT caps or connectors, and our inductors should fit.


elmood

[mrpackethead]

Im seriously considering it, and its good to know the limitations before you buy it!

[TheSteve]

The limit is clearance between the bottom of the nozzle and the top of the feeders. As was mentioned you should be able to do some slightly taller parts if they are from a tray - you'd want to be pretty careful though. The up facing camera is lower but you'd need enough distance to maintain focus.

btw, I assume we are the first or very close to the first customer in a primarily english speaking country to have a Neoden4 as some of the PC software was still in chinese and we had to have them put in the proper translations. I can't see anyone else having used it the way it was. On the plus side they fixed it and sent us an updated version in a few hours.

The bottom of the nozzle to the top of the feeder is ~9mm.

Just took this pic:

[mrpackethead]

Wonder why they did this. I can't see any reasons why they could not have made this gap wider.  30mm or so

[Royce]

From the convo, it seems like they suggest you control the path that the head takes from the tray to the pads. Is it possible to do that? Can you make the head navigate around obstacles?

[mrpackethead]

From the convo, it seems like they suggest you control the path that the head takes from the tray to the pads. Is it possible to do that? Can you make the head navigate around obstacles?

If that is the case, it would make it much more usable. 

[TheSteve]

If I had to guess I'd say it is all related to precision. The further down the nozzle has to travel the more potential there is for X/Y and rotational errors if it isn't perfectly straight.

[MTNELECTRONICS]

Speaking of trays, what kind of trays are you guys using?  Neoden didn't seem to be of much help when I asked them about some good "waffle tray" suppliers.

[mrpackethead]

the Neo4 is never going to be a big production volume machine so probably can live with a few quirks.

If it can place  5 < x < 10 mm parts out of the tray, and you can control the paths so it doesn't crash into them. then this would be an acceptable compromise for me.

I only have a small hand full of parts that are bigger than 10mm, and many of them come on really wide feeders anyway, and they typically are 1 part per board. ( for example big ethernet transformer ), so some big inductors.   The ones that do worry me are inductors and caps

[TheSteve]

Speaking of trays, what kind of trays are you guys using?  Neoden didn't seem to be of much help when I asked them about some good "waffle tray" suppliers.

The trays we have are the standard ones included with ICs etc. If we needed something custom in the past we machined pockets into ABS plastic with a Taig CNC mill.

[coppice]

Speaking of trays, what kind of trays are you guys using?  Neoden didn't seem to be of much help when I asked them about some good "waffle tray" suppliers.

They probably didn't understand your question. ICs come in waffle trays. You don't buy they from the marketplace. Since the ICs are supplied in them, you have to live with whatever you get, good or bad.

[thommo]

Hi TheSteve

Thanks for a tremendous blog reviews. Please continue with the plentiful reports of your journey.

Have you had an opportunity to actually run the machine yet? I'd love to know how it performed 'out of the box', and if its claimed resolution and repeat-ability is lived up to.

In particular, if it can maintain that accuracy having traveled over the 'full dimensions' of the placement bed - and not just the few centimeters shown in the videos.

We're on the verge of committing to purchase for prototypes and new product intro purposes.

Thnx

[TheSteve]

We have placed 0603 and 0805 resistors but only on unpasted boards to get a feel for the machine and the various settings. As I posted previously we have had an issue with the parts sticking to the nozzles and are waiting for a replacement air pump. When we do run it our smallest passives will be 0603's and the smallest ICs will be TSSOP's so not an extreme test but not trivial either.

[Psi]

The paste does a good job at holding the part to the pcb when the needle pulls away.

I have a manual vacume pick n place tool that is just a constant vacuum.
No on off or reverse at all. The suction is enough to pickup parts from reels but not enough to pull a pasted component off the pcb.
Works perfectly for placing generic passives but I need to adjust the suction for  big stuff.

[TheSteve]

For sure the paste makes a big difference but when a machine actually generates a (small) positive pressure the parts shouldn't stick. We are of course comparing part placement to our old Juki 570L which placed parts quite well with or without paste.

[MTNELECTRONICS]

Speaking of trays, what kind of trays are you guys using?  Neoden didn't seem to be of much help when I asked them about some good "waffle tray" suppliers.

The trays we have are the standard ones included with ICs etc. If we needed something custom in the past we machined pockets into ABS plastic with a Taig CNC mill.

Thanks, I suppose I have just exposed my level of inexperience.      I figured that people bought all of those fancy trays but now I realize that the bigger ICs come packaged like that.  I have some shallow SMD inductors and a few other parts that come in huge tapes that I was hoping to get a tray for, but I suppose that I could just get something 3D printed. 

[TheSteve]

Speaking of trays, what kind of trays are you guys using?  Neoden didn't seem to be of much help when I asked them about some good "waffle tray" suppliers.

The trays we have are the standard ones included with ICs etc. If we needed something custom in the past we machined pockets into ABS plastic with a Taig CNC mill.

Thanks, I suppose I have just exposed my level of inexperience.      I figured that people bought all of those fancy trays but now I realize that the bigger ICs come packaged like that.  I have some shallow SMD inductors and a few other parts that come in huge tapes that I was hoping to get a tray for, but I suppose that I could just get something 3D printed.

If they are in standard reel format tape then you should be able to place them using a standard feeder of the correct width - assuming they aren't too thick for the machine placing them.

[rwb]

TheSteve What kind of assembly volume do you expect to put through the machine once you get it up and running?

Also what is the pin pitch on the TSSOP your placing?

I have some .5 mm pitch TSSOP's and some BGA parts that I'm eager to see how well and quickly you can get the machine to run without problems.

[mikeselectricstuff]

For sure the paste makes a big difference but when a machine actually generates a (small) positive pressure the parts shouldn't stick. We are of course comparing part placement to our old Juki 570L which placed parts quite well with or without paste.

By "without paste" do you mean with nothing at all, or with thin-film double-stick tape which is what's usually used for trial placements?
I'd never expect anything sensible placing on a bare PCB as the slightest movement of the PCB will make parts slide around.

My machine doesn't use any blow-off and the only time I've ever had parts stuck is LEDs with soft silicone lenses
 

[rx8pilot]

I use double stick tape when programming and testing. Works great.


Sent from mobile device.... Keeping it short and mis-spelled

[TheSteve]

We have used double sided tape before. With our Juki 570L we fine tuned it and did quite a bit of testing with no paste or tape. When setup properly we could have it place nearly any part with the others moving very little or not at all. I doubt the Neoden will ever achieve that level of precision(and I'm not saying it is really required). We just found it was a good way to to determine how far the part should be pushed into the board and how fast.

[mikeselectricstuff]

the Neo4 is never going to be a big production volume machine so probably can live with a few quirks.

If it can place  5 < x < 10 mm parts out of the tray, and you can control the paths so it doesn't crash into them. then this would be an acceptable compromise for me.

Controlling paths would get pretty messy - I'd be surprised if there is any real support for it in the software.
 Another issue is tall parts clashing with already-placed parts. Although you can have some control by placing parts in size order, you ideally want a P&P to deal with feed errors & parts running out by moving on to the next part and placing everything it can before stopping for operator intervention, so you may have to go back & place parts in a different order.
Of course it wouldn't surprise me at all if their SW was too dumb to do this and just stopped on any error.
 

[MTNELECTRONICS]

Any thoughts on whether or not the rail feeder system is worthwhile?  I mainly plan on using ~170mm x ~120mm board panels with the machine, probably running about 10 panels of the same type at once.  It seems like repeatability with the feeder would be good, but taking the time to set it up for different panel sizes might outweigh the time needed to change panels, especially with only 10 panels of a given size at a time.

[thommo]

Looking at their 'how to' video, Panel Config looks fairly straight forward. We're in the same boat as you with qty, and have decided on the Rail option, though I'm certain it could be retro fitted if needs be.

What we're really interested in is just how much work will be involved in modifying the reel and tape box assembly, so that we can remove the complete unit and replace it with another, pre-loaded cart, for different regular projects.

Because there is no complex mechanical dependency, we'd just need to resolve the electrical interface, and bingo! Would be great if we could convince NeoDen to integrate this feature out of the box. A whole new level in micro-machines for PnP.

[rwb]

Here is some NeoDen 4 action porn while we wait for some USA based videos 

https://youtu.be/QVwoeYyHx8c

https://youtu.be/moKGPF1dnRI