Neoden 4 pick and place

[sparkswillfly]

where do you purchase the 920 ? Can't find any sources in the internet

Probably contact qihekj.com directly.  It is on taobao, but interestingly not on aliexpress anymore.  Other interesting pneumatic feeder machines are chmt530p, smt330, smt460.  Hoping someone reviews some of these.

[thommo]

Hi Harry4516,

I don't want to hijack the Neoden space but, in answer to your question:

Sparkswillfly is correct - you can contact them directly on 0086-577-62058872, or
http://www.qihekj.com/en/product/html/?45.html
or, you can contact Daisy [salesperson] on Skype - live:daisyqiu1994

The reason I'm going with the TVM920 is due to the fact that their GUI runs on a separate monitor and keyboard. Other manufacturers use small touch interfaces, and other systems which I didn't find attractive.

That, and a mate of mine has purchased one and is very impressed - he says the build quality if absolutely fantastic.

Good luck

[thommo]

Hi Harry4516,

I don't want to hijack the Neoden space but, in answer to your question:

Sparkswillfly is correct - you can contact them directly on 0086-577-62058872, or
http://www.qihekj.com/en/product/html/?45.html
or, you can contact Daisy [salesperson] on Skype - live:daisyqiu1994

The reason I'm going with the TVM920 is due to the fact that their GUI runs on a separate monitor and keyboard. Other manufacturers [who also offer Yamaha feeders], use small touch interfaces, and other systems which I didn't find attractive.

That, and a mate of mine has purchased one and is very impressed - he says the build quality if absolutely fantastic.

Good luck

[ebclr]

4 head

http://pt.aliexpress.com/item/Vertical-type-4-Place-heads-High-Speed-SMT-Pick-and-Place-Machine-Pick-Place-Machine-For/32420182694.html?spm=2114.10010308.0.40.7QZViL&isOrigTitle=true

[rx8pilot]

Are those the Yamaha feeders? Driven entirely by pneumatic power?


The nozzles look massive, curious what type they are. The crazy thing is that is can't hold a useful payload of parts - you would be swapping feeders constantly with all the most basic PCB's.

[harry4516]

Are those the Yamaha feeders? Driven entirely by pneumatic power?


The nozzles look massive, curious what type they are. The crazy thing is that is can't hold a useful payload of parts - you would be swapping feeders constantly with all the most basic PCB's.

yes, 40 feeders is too little. But the Neoden4 also has only 48 reel feeders, not many more.
(The TVM802B has 46, and I am swapping reels all the time, which is a terrible job without real feeders).
The 920 with 56 Yamaha feeders looks good in this price range.

Does anyone know videos showing how to insert reels into Neoden4 or Yamaha Feeders ?

[mrpackethead]

no video of yamaha CL feeder, but can tell you it only takes 20 seconds..  Hardest bit is sometimes getting the cover tape free of the carrier tape.

[rx8pilot]

yes, 40 feeders is too little. But the Neoden4 also has only 48 reel feeders, not many more.

Not sure if I am in the minority or not, but most of my boards have 12mm, 16mm, and some 24mm tapes which very quickly reduce the total number of parts that the machine can handle. Something to consider, for sure. Take a look at your typical boards or create some realistic scenarios and see how many feeder swaps may be required. The use cases of any P&P obviously varies wildly, but these seem so limiting that it would be tough for me to consider it a business tool.

no video of yamaha CL feeder, but can tell you it only takes 20 seconds..  Hardest bit is sometimes getting the cover tape free of the carrier tape.

In my experience, the threading of the feeder is a fraction of the total time needed to swap out feeders. You have figure out what needs to happen, get the reel or cut tape, take out the old parts, thread the new one, get it into the machine and verify that everything is ok. As I have gained more experience, I can do this pretty fast on my machine, but if I had to multiply that times the number of total feeder changes during a daily run - I would be very very frustrated. I would rather buy two-three of these and have the option of serializing the process.

Before I accidentally found the machine I have - I did consider 2 or more of the entry level machines so that I could have backup, parallel, or serial setups. This machine could be a good candidate for that type of setup - it's cheap enough. My assumption is that anyone looking seriously at any level of P&P has some sort of business need for it. Reliability and flexibility are more important than CPH and head count overall. if your machine has 8 heads and rated at 50k CPH, that is not helpful if it is always messing up or is not flexible enough to do the whole job. For example, my machine initially could not place tall parts and I had a bunch (thousands) of tall caps that needed to be hand placed. Although the machine did great with 99% of the parts - hand placing thousands of caps was not part of my plan. I fixed that problem ASAP!

[mrpackethead]

Aggree with that last comment, that the actual swap out is not really the big time thing.. Its the big picture of just thinking about the swap out, that really takes time.

Im a bit like you RX, that 56 slots, is not really enough.  I'd have jumped in and bought a 920 ages ago, but the total count is just not enough, to get to this narvana position of "press print".

[HHaase]

Swapping feeders is a constant headache, no matter what machine you have.  It's something you need to take a whole-process approach to in order to find all the efficiency you can.  Parts commonality, packaging selection, verification process, even down to how you queue your standby racks.    Do you keep the machine constantly loaded, with a single load pattern, for all assemblies?  Or do you empty it out and re-load from assembly to assembly?  All depends on your priority and PCBA complexities.   

We've got some assemblies at my full-time which fill almost all 214 slots in our CP6/IP3 lines,  talk about a nightmare to change over.   But the vast majority are under 50 slots worth of space.  Usually connectors are the worst offender for taking up a lot of feeder slots per component.  Yet still we end up with hand placed parts from time to time for whatever reason. 

The biggest limitation I can see in most of the tabletop machines isn't really feeder count,  but tray count. 

[rx8pilot]

Swapping feeders is a constant headache, no matter what machine you have.  It's something you need to take a whole-process approach to in order to find all the efficiency you can.  Parts commonality, packaging selection, verification process, even down to how you queue your standby racks.    Do you keep the machine constantly loaded, with a single load pattern, for all assemblies?  Or do you empty it out and re-load from assembly to assembly?  All depends on your priority and PCBA complexities.   

We've got some assemblies at my full-time which fill almost all 214 slots in our CP6/IP3 lines,  talk about a nightmare to change over.   But the vast majority are under 50 slots worth of space.  Usually connectors are the worst offender for taking up a lot of feeder slots per component.  Yet still we end up with hand placed parts from time to time for whatever reason. 

The biggest limitation I can see in most of the tabletop machines isn't really feeder count,  but tray count.

Truth in all of that. My machine has (I think) 118 slots plus 2 matrix trays. It took quite a while to develop a strategy for efficiency - but I will say that the machine to completely packed full to cover our normal PCB's. By only swapping the trays, I can do 6 different PCB's without swapping a single feeder. That capability allows me to do the small 'just in time' runs with very little penalty. The small desktop machines would be full swaps of every single feeder for each PCB design.

Not sure how I would approach it as a job shop, never done it. We are able to design the P&P work flow around our designs, schedule, proto-types, etc which means we end up with a solution that may not match others needs. In general, I would say that feeder count is a critical consideration for most operations. If the machine cannot hold very many, buy enough feeders to fill the machine twice or more and setup a dedicated prep station to get feeders prepped while another job is running.

For those just getting into PCB assembly, what @HHaase says

It's something you need to take a whole-process approach to in order to find all the efficiency you can.

is very true. The P&P machine is the fancy centerpiece, but it is only as good as the whole process allows it to be. It took me the better part of a year to really dial in a system that is smooth and error resistant.

[mrpackethead]

yeah, for those that thing they will be able to "press print" and make pcbs like they make plastic forks on a 3d printer.. they will be getting a beating

[technotronix]

I just read a very informative and interesting article on "Next generation NeoDen pick and place machine"

http://paxinstruments.com/next-generation-neoden-pick-and-place-machine/

[mrpackethead]

I just read a very informative and interesting article on "Next generation NeoDen pick and place machine"

http://paxinstruments.com/next-generation-neoden-pick-and-place-machine/

Spam. Theres not a lot in that article. Mr #3 posts.

[HHaase]

Not sure how I would approach it as a job shop, never done it. We are able to design the P&P work flow around our designs, schedule, proto-types, etc which means we end up with a solution that may not match others needs. In general, I would say that feeder count is a critical consideration for most operations. If the machine cannot hold very many, buy enough feeders to fill the machine twice or more and setup a dedicated prep station to get feeders prepped while another job is running.

For those just getting into PCB assembly, what @HHaase says

It's something you need to take a whole-process approach to in order to find all the efficiency you can.

is very true. The P&P machine is the fancy centerpiece, but it is only as good as the whole process allows it to be. It took me the better part of a year to really dial in a system that is smooth and error resistant.

Sounds about right to get a machine dialed-in properly.  Particularly if you're doing all aspects of it yourself.  Then, once you get it all settled down, inevitably there's a change in design philosophies and the cycle starts again. Sometimes it just seems to take forever when you're stuck adding a pile of new component packages to the inventory.  Having a newly manufactured machine does help a lot too.  Buy something used and you're also stuck with having to R&R plus potentially undo 'creative maintenance' that's been done in the past.  can get time consuming and expensive real fast.

A great book that I'd recommend, if you are in a case of swapping all the feeders per assembly, is "The SMED method".   Doesn't specifically address electronics assembly but the lessons are still just as applicable.  Even if all you take away from the book is the concept of online vs offline,  you're already leagues ahead of the game.   From experience, once a line is running reliably, get your warehousing under control and be prepared to overstock on parts with high loss rates.   Keeping the machine fed properly is going to reduce your biggest potential source for downtime.

[Cathy_Neoden]

Dear all,

Welcome to check out the latest video from one of our customers.
He connected 5 NeoDen4, a semi-auto solder printer and a reflow oven to achieve a faster production line.
Hope this could be useful for those who want to start small-medium batch production.

[jkauf]

Received our Neoden4 2 weeks ago (in San Antonio TX).  Thanks to all the people on this thread that helped make that decision.

So far we have made 2 designs (about 8 boards total).   Keep in mind this is our first go at P&P besides my 10 years or so of experience with previous company who had 3 multi-M$ lines (but I did not run them of course). 

Things exceeded my expectations.  Here's comments I can think of and really anything negative that comes to mind (everything else is good).

Cons:
1. We were stupid and only bought enough for 10 of each part like we might normally do when hand-placing.  Should have at least spent $20-30 for the cheap resistor and capacitor reels.  This led to lots of issues with feeders and hassle dealing with the shortcomings of software.  Also trying to tape extenders on the peel so that it would reach the peeler (led to even more problems and less parts). 

So not completely the machine's fault, but still a pain b/c software doesn't deal well.  When a part fails to pick (after 3 retries), there is no "skip" part option.  Only option is to try again or stop the build.  If this was my software I could fix this in about 15 minutes!  So you have to stop the build, and then can set where you will restart, but that's a pain if you're missing multiple parts as we were.  Note that you can skip parts, but when you just want to place till they run out, the s/w sucks.  So they should add a "skip" option to this prompt, or even better also add a "align" so you can feed a new part in and keep going.

Further we have found that the feeder tape needs to be fed about 2 or 3 inches so the head of the tape starts wrapping down below the machine or else it might snag for a few mm's and then have a mis-pick (and then come the woes I described above).

The "Vision Align" option in the "Mount"/run page is nice!  It shows up after you align fiducials and you can hop to each part to visually inspect placement.

Note that to resume from a current part is also very weird.  You have top stop the build, select your part, and then click "Save".  (Save???).  Anyway then it resumes from that part after it realigns.  It didn't seem to always work if I tried to do this after aligning so I just got in the habbit of stopping, aligning so I could use the "Vision Align" to find the last unstuffed part, then stop, then click the part and do the save, then run again.  Sigh.  After a few times of this I realized that when a pick fails and you have to click "Stop" (b/c no "skip"), it will tell you which part is next in the little output window.  That helped.

In regards to all this, my advice is that you don't enable the multi-nozzle pick until you are ready to run in high volume and know the feeders and parts are all good to go and not going to run out after a few boards.  Reason here is because if you try 3 parts at once (i.e. Line #22, 23, and 24,), then if 22 fails to pick, you can't easily resume.  You can abort, then restart on #22, but now you will replace 23 and 24.  Note that as a result we had a few 0402s so perfectly placed on top of each other you couldn't tell from the top camera during "Vision Align".

Also, some parts hopped out or flipped sideways.  Our machine wobbles b/c we are running it 100% speed (we will sand-bag it later), and the short 2" tapes and hacked up peel might also contribute.  Tip: try to pick up very early in the hole to help this out.  Wish you could slow the feeders down b/c that might also be the cause (which would suck b/c might be hard to fix).

So in summary, buy a reel or at least 10 spares of everything.  Also, run with one nozzle until you build up confidence in the feeders and can run a # of boards in "continuous" mode without babysitting (we haven't really gotten there quite yet b/c we really only bought for 10 of each design).  Also we are going to buy some tape extenders... we were using think kapton (sp?) tape and wrapping present ribbon to extend it but those fell off sometimes also adding to problems. 

1.5.  We spent a lot of time understanding how the fiducials and board alignment worked (as many people mentioned).    Largely b/c we wanted to understand it perfectly.  I think the real source of the confusion is that the mark setup (bottom left corner of screen) has a visual align option when in "Manual" mode, but it will set machine absolute coordinates when it really wants PCB coordinates.  So just manually pull your fiducials coords from your XY data and it will be happier.  Then align the panel to your 1st component in the panel setup section (this just helps it get the fiducial somewhere in its field of view during the actual fiducial/board alignment, so doesn't need to be perfect).  I made a program to make this easier that will put FID1 first and will auto-load all the fiducial coords.  So all you have to do is then go do the panel align to pick FID1 (which is now your first part, instead of picking "the first part in your XY"). 

2.  Our 2 designs had various tightly spaced 0402's, and a 0.4mm QFN, and a 0.5mm QFP as the tightest components.  Placement seemed good in all cases, but our new ventures in stencil ordering were the problem.  Too thick and didn't window heat pads, so this led to a lot of bridges to be touched up manually.   Not the machines problem of course.  But my 2 weeks experience would say that the stencil/paste is a very critical aspect.  We bought the higher-end manual paste machine from Neoden (about $300-400 IIRC, I don't think its their brand though), but ended up not even doing the framed stencils for these boards.  Can anybody recommend a good stencil supplier for the full framed stencils?.  We aligned carefully using similar thickness pcbs to sort of "frame" the PCB being pasted b/c our stencil didn't come with a frame.   So ultimately our stencil machine was just a nice table-top for this. 

3. Feeder count is low.  We were thinking "no problem b/c if it works well and we start doing more, its cheap enough to just buy another machine".  Problem is that in the meantime you will need to a lot of swaps and it takes a few feeds for things to settle (see #1) and software doesn't really make this job much easier.  Would be nice if there was a notion of a part or footprint library that saved settings such as rotation, feeder spacing, pick height, place height, speed, etc.  But there's not so you will have to set this up everytime you load a part.  I'm sure for the veterans this isn't a big deal to get right the first time, but we spent a lot of time trying to make sense of which direction is clockwise, height, etc and so inevitably the first run or two will be trials where you are hopping back and forth between the "Mount" and the "Feeders" pages, wasting parts on each iteration.  Probably not physically possible, but it would be nice to be able to go backwards on the feeders or to be able to pick and put it right back down. 

4. I could not figure out the format to load XY data.  For some reason everything loaded but the X and the Y.  Couldn't find a sample either and didn't bother asking.  Instead found their "mount" format which is easy to understand (CSV).  It stores feeders, mark settings, and XY data.  I made a C# program to convert my XY data and prepare feeders.  This makes the alignment problems as described in #1.5 above a non-issue.   Also, I added some very basic smarts so we could create a sort of part library that will be auto-loaded into the feeder settings.  Also it attempts to preserve or re-use existing re-used components which would sort of be manual with the Neoden software (I suppose you could copy/paste a previous job).  My envisioned work-flow was that there would only ever be one Mount job that represents the current settings in the machine.  Then to load a new board you save that (thus capturing all current loader feeder/part info), import it in my program, and then load a new XY.  It then tells you all new parts to load and assigns them to empty slots first (nothing fancy) so as to try to keep all feeders maxed out at all times (to minimize swaps).  We'll see how this goes b/c my first time using it was really a trial and error where I added features as I found issues.  But I'm already thinking we will max out our machine now just to save a bit of extra setup time (we plan this for a lot of quick protos initially).  I'll try to put this in github for others at some point if someone asks.  I'll give a disclaimer that it is a 1 source file total C# hack job. 

5. We blew a fuse about 1 week in.  Very scary at first b/c I had just crashed their software (with an invalid file format) before needing to power cycle, when it didn't wake back up.  They had a spare fuse (where the AC cord comes in), and this immediately blew too.  Fortunately I think someone in this forum mentioned this issue which helped calm me down.  They ship with a 3A fuse meant for 220V countries, so it needs to be twice that for 110V.  We got a 10A fuse and it works (but have some appropriate 5A fuses coming from Amazon). 

So in summary, the machine exceeded my expectations.  We did the 0201 test boards with all placed accurately but 4 on side (out of about 20) that was presumably same feeder issues from #1 where parts shake out or sideways due to machine running fast and we have a wobble.

I'll give another update once we do more than a handful of protos and actually get appropriate reels. 

Did anything more come of the openpnp.org discussions?  Seems this thread has died but couldn't find anything anywhere else either.  I have a background in CAN (developed http://www.cancapture.com) and reversing CAN protocols so can help with the feeders and provide hardware. I can also provide the RS232 serial logs if that hasn't happened.  I would much rather be fixing problems in an open source software suite than trying to write custom C# code to work around neoden's short-comings.  So Jason, if you're listening, you have a tester here.  I'm afraid the learning curve would be too high for me to port the entire machine, but if you can get something started and partially running, I can definitely help debug and finish off the code.  If we could get openpnp running, from what I have seen this machine could be incredible. 

[harry4516]

Dear all,

Welcome to check out the latest video from one of our customers.
...

nice video, but when will people understand to hold the smartphone horizontally instead of vertically to get a full picture instead of only a very small picture in the middle of the scrren.

[mikeselectricstuff]

When a part fails to pick (after 3 retries), there is no "skip" part option.  Only option is to try again or stop the build.

Staggeringly piss-poor design, but pretty much what we've come to expect from China. No common -sense or imagination.
The whole point about a P&P machine is you can just leave it to get on with the job,
If it has a problem, it should just carry on with the next part and do everything it can, and alert the user only when it can't do any more, so all the issues can be sorted out in one go.

If this was my software I could fix this in about 15 minutes! 

This is something that needs to be designed in from day one - the ability to keep track of non-placed parts to sort out later. Not rocket science, but needs some thought to do properly.
Similarly if something hangs/crashes part-way, it should be able to carry on from where it left off.

In regards to all this, my advice is that you don't enable the multi-nozzle pick until you are ready to run in high volume and know the feeders and parts are all good to go and not going to run out after a few boards.  Reason here is because if you try 3 parts at once (i.e. Line #22, 23, and 24,), then if 22 fails to pick, you can't easily resume.  You can abort, then restart on #22, but now you will replace 23 and 24. 

This is the sort of thing (along with the laughable video)  that stops companies like Neoden being taken seriously. It's so sad that they just don't understand the issues.

Did anything more come of the openpnp.org discussions?  Seems this thread has died but couldn't find anything anywhere else either.

The OpenPnP mailing list at Googlegroups is pretty active, though no recent discussions of N4
Probably worth joining if you want to get involved.

[harry4516]

this is how the TVM802 handles missing parts, not perfect, but works quite comfortable:

when a part cannot be picked up the machine retries it for 5 times.
If this is unsuccessful it first places the part of the other nozzle (if any is on this nozzle) and
then stops and beeps.
Now I have three alternative choices:
a. correct the problem (i.e. supply new parts, change reel...) and press CONT to continue the job
b. if this is not possible because the PnP head is in the way, then I can stop the job, move the head to its home position,
    correct the problem. Then I press START and can choose to continue at the same position where it was interrupted.
c. if I cannot correct the problem (i.e. I don't have spare parts available), before continuing I can mark the bad part with a mouse click and it will be skipped.

The most important thing is that the machine places the good parts from the other nozzle before stopping the job.

[mikeselectricstuff]

this is how the TVM802 handles missing parts, not perfect, but works quite comfortable:

when a part cannot be picked up the machine retries it for 5 times.
If this is unsuccessful it first places the part of the other nozzle (if any is on this nozzle) and
then stops and beeps.
Now I have three alternative choices:
a. correct the problem (i.e. supply new parts, change reel...) and press CONT to continue the job
b. if this is not possible because the PnP head is in the way, then I can stop the job, move the head to its home position,
    correct the problem. Then I press START and can choose to continue at the same position where it was interrupted.
c. if I cannot correct the problem (i.e. I don't have spare parts available), before continuing I can mark the bad part with a mouse click and it will be skipped.

The most important thing is that the machine places the good parts from the other nozzle before stopping the job.

That seems a bit of a half-assed approach - by far the most likely cause of errors is parts running out or a feeder jam, sp abandoning a nozzle is a pretty stupid approach, though not quite as stupid as just stopping completely.

[vonnieda]

Did anything more come of the openpnp.org discussions?  Seems this thread has died but couldn't find anything anywhere else either.  I have a background in CAN (developed http://www.cancapture.com) and reversing CAN protocols so can help with the feeders and provide hardware. I can also provide the RS232 serial logs if that hasn't happened.  I would much rather be fixing problems in an open source software suite than trying to write custom C# code to work around neoden's short-comings.  So Jason, if you're listening, you have a tester here.  I'm afraid the learning curve would be too high for me to port the entire machine, but if you can get something started and partially running, I can definitely help debug and finish off the code.  If we could get openpnp running, from what I have seen this machine could be incredible.

Nothing has come of it. I'd still very much like to support this machine. There was one person in Seattle who was looking to buy one that I could hack on, but that didn't work out.

First step would be to get some labeled RS-232 logs and then we could go from there. Ideally the logs would have timestamps and you could describe each major action you took with timestamps. I think this would be enough to at least tell me how much work we're looking at and whether I can do this without access to a machine.

Jason

[mva]

We received our Neoden Pick and place machine over a month ago. Despite all the software flaws we are pretty pleased with this machine.

Before the Neoden4 we used an old Siplace F3 full production Pick and Place machine. This machine was a little overkill for us, as we are only assembling prototypes and small batches. So we got rid of the Siemens F3 and bought the Neoden4. I beleive this is the best machine, with respect to price/performance, on the market today (we need to place 0201 also), but I have to admit, the software is not very userfriendly and far from practical.

It would be fantastic if we can get OpenPNP running on the Neoden4. Also I believe Neoden would also benefit if we can get OpenPNP to work on the Neoden4. They will get a beter machine when they combine their hardware with the OpenPNP software. Perhaps Neoden is willing to accommodate in this quest. It can not hurt to ask them anyway, or perhaps they can respond to this thread  .
Jason, I really hope you will receive all the necessary information to get OpenPNP working on the Neoden4.

[jkauf]

Unfortunately I installed a serial port sniffer and it does not appear to be G-code.  Looks like some command protocol where they send a simple command and then a set of data bytes come back. Probably similar to g-code (everything appeared to be TX+RX repeated in order) but definitely not ASCII. 

I only spent about 2 minutes after I saw the data was non-ASCII before I had to run for a week long business trip.  I will try to look at things a bit more and see if I can make more sense of it.  Jason, can you tell me your recommended serial port sniffer s/w?  I installed Eltima. 

I'll also try to poke into some of their DLLs (they have a lot) to see if there's any good looking functions we can piggy back onto. 

Also going to reach out to my contact to see if they can give a response on the subject.  I would urge anybody else who has purchased or considering purchasing to do the same.  Seems this would only increase their sales for maybe a few hours of effort so not sure why they wouldn't provide any sort of documentation.

[mikeselectricstuff]

so not sure why they wouldn't provide any sort of documentation.

Quite possible they don't have any,and if they do it will be in Chinese.
I'd be extremely surprised if anything was forthcoming, but no harm in asking.
The quality of the current software is an indication of how important they consider this sort of thing to be.