NEW!! We just introduced a neat little manual pick and place machine: SMT Caddy!

[SMT Caddy]

A new, affordable tool for building your own boards:



SMTCaddy.com

https://youtu.be/JStbyvxd7bg

It's packed with convenience features for prototyping and short runs, motorized tape feeders, a very versatile digital microscope, color touchscreen, custom software, etc., and it's made in sunny California!

Please feel free to contact us for any additional info: info@SMTCaddy.com

[BNElecEng]

Very cool idea. Do you have any plans to ship to the UK?

[asmi]

You have very interesting meaning of word "affordable". $2800 is not affordable since many automatic PnP machines are in the same price ballpark.

* asmi went back to manually place parts...

[SMT Caddy]

Thank You! This was a "necessity is mother of all inventions" moment. Got tired of going out for custom boards and prototypes, and didn't like any of the available solutions for tools, so, we made our own machine

Due to the tax and certification overheads, we decided to stick with the US market for now, but, we plan to partner up with an EU distributor, soon. Sorry for the inconvenience! you can take it up with the regulatory authorities making it rather impossible to work internationally unless you're Google!

[photon]

I really like your work.

[hermit]

You have very interesting meaning of word "affordable". $2800 is not affordable since many automatic PnP machines are in the same price ballpark.

* asmi went back to manually place parts...

Maybe they need to hire someone to do a proper film.  I had to stop watching.  Moving text while trying to watch what was going on when they could have used some of the ample dead space to do that.  Seriously, cut the crap and give the details.  You are trying to sell to technical people here.

[ataradov]

I had to stop watching.

Same here. It is like somebody just got after effects and got their money worth .

Can you show a complete process of stuffing a medium size board with no jump cuts.

I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of the moving display.

[ovnr]

moving display

Oh look, my interest just flew out the window into the chilly night, and I didn't even have to watch the video.

[SMT Caddy]

We'll post another video soon, with emphasis only on P&P. We'll add a link to this thread.

The system offers an HDMI port for an external display as well. You can duplicate the video on another 1080P monitor. Though, this will require a 'dangling' cord. The moving display, though unorthodox at first glance, is something you quickly acclimate to. Most of us have actually grown to like it

Considering that the camera (and other accessories) will need to move on the gantry, and the CCD interface cables, etc., are far more sensitive to length and flex, the controller climbed up on the gantry very quickly! The highest-end HDMI cables will not tolerate continuous flex through the tracks; a few thousand cycles and you'll lose your video! Some imports would not consider such issues. A continuous flex HDMI cable is 3 times the width of the existing track, not to mention the exorbitant cost. We couldn't tolerate a dangling cable (though not immune to the flex scenario); we opted for reliability here, hence, a moving display

Always open to improvement ideas and suggestions

[sleemanj]

Price is crazy, but that's what you get for "Made in USA" I guess, it's also rather highly spec'd for a manual system.

It doesn't look like there is much in the way of damping on the axes, that's something worth considering I'd think.

[DerekG]

Due to the tax and certification overheads, we decided to stick with the US market for now, but, we plan to partner up with an EU distributor, soon. Sorry for the inconvenience! you can take it up with the regulatory authorities making it rather impossible to work internationally unless you're Google!

Geeeez ...................... this is not the way to run a business.

How hard is it to get an account with FedEx or DHL, pack the item up securely & send it to your customers overseas?

You get a signature on delivery & accept payment by Paypal or into your bank etc before shipping.

But please, put your video camera on a stand & redo your video like a professional ............. if you are serious about wanting to truly enter this market.

[Mr. Scram]

Geeeez ...................... this is not the way to run a business.

How hard is it to get an account with FedEx or DHL, pack the item up securely & send it to your customers overseas?

You get a signature on delivery & accept payment by Paypal or into your bank etc before shipping.

But please, put your video camera on a stand & redo your video like a professional ............. if you are serious about wanting to truly enter this market.

I hate to say it, but it's not that easy. You need to do a fair bit of homework before you can sell overseas. I've come to realize that developing the product is often the easy part, and that dealing with all the certifications and the other shenanigans is what complicates things. Even something as simple as VAT can turn into a headache. In some easily encountered cases, you're required to register as a company in the country you sell to, and report your VAT there separately. This means hiring one or more local experts to support you and help you navigate this fully unfamiliar environment. This may have to be repeated for every country you sell to.

So no, it's not as easy as throwing it in a box and slapping on a sticker. The grown up world is stupid like that, but it is what it is.

[ovnr]

Considering that the camera (and other accessories) will need to move on the gantry, and the CCD interface cables, etc., are far more sensitive to length and flex, the controller climbed up on the gantry very quickly! The highest-end HDMI cables will not tolerate continuous flex through the tracks; a few thousand cycles and you'll lose your video! Some imports would not consider such issues. A continuous flex HDMI cable is 3 times the width of the existing track, not to mention the exorbitant cost. We couldn't tolerate a dangling cable (though not immune to the flex scenario); we opted for reliability here, hence, a moving display

You do realize that the Raspi camera CSI cable is a flex cable? Like those used in inkjet printers and scanners, which do this sort of thing all day long without breaking a sweat? And that they work fine up to at least 50 cm?

Also, I thought reducing the weight of moving parts was a big deal, since that also drops the noise (less banging around), allows higher speeds (less inertia) and smaller motors?

[DerekG]

The grown up world is stupid like that, but it is what it is.

Yes, you are right, but there is another way to circumvent a lot of this. The supplier states that they will ship to a reshipping agent in their own country, then the overseas purchaser organises everything off their own back to get the item to its destination.

The overseas company is then simply importing a product that they already own as the sale clearly took place within the USA. This simplifies the paperwork in their own country.

For example we use these two companies for getting product out of the USA. Total costs normally run from US$80 to US$160 depending on the weight & destination of the package.

https://secure.comgateway.com

https://www.reship.com

[mikeselectricstuff]

Nice idea but way too complicated and hence too expensive.

[Mr. Scram]

Yes, you are right, but there is another way to circumvent a lot of this. The supplier states that they will ship to a reshipping agent in their own country, then the overseas purchaser organises everything off their own back to get the item to its destination.

The overseas company is then simply importing a product that they already own as the sale clearly took place within the USA. This simplifies the paperwork in their own country.

For example we use these two companies for getting product out of the USA. Total costs normally run from US$80 to US$160 depending on the weight & destination of the package.

https://secure.comgateway.com

https://www.reship.com

Considering sales in the US aren't a problem, this is already a viable method. I do think you have to be careful of combining the service with the sale, though, as different tax agencies might view it is as a trick to circumvent regulations. The wrath of the taxman is not something to be fancied. Of course, it also shifts the burden on the customer, which isn't ideal either.

Selling it just in the US, leaving it up to the customer to figure it out if he really wants one seems a sensible route, at least if you don't want to get entangled in international tomfoolery.

[Mr. Scram]

Nice idea but way too complicated and hence too expensive.

While I appreciate your comments and insights, adding a constructive element to the criticism would be welcome

[mikeselectricstuff]

Nice idea but way too complicated and hence too expensive.

While I appreciate your comments and insights, adding a constructive element to the criticism would be welcome

Simplify, to reduce cost.
All you need is a magnifier - fixed lens with maybe 2x software zoom is probably all that's needed.
 I can't see that  all the other stuff adds much to productivity. A built-in web browser... seriously?

Compared to a normal hand-placement flow of picking from tape with a foot-operated vacuum pen, the things that would obviously improve this significantly are the hand steady , the rotatable pick head and the integrated magnifier. Anything more is diminishing returns.

Having to un-reel, cut tape and re-reel them on to low-capacity feeders is pretty awkward and wasteful

And if you are going to  have a computer in there and be charging that much, I'd expect it to have position encoders so I could upload a pick/place file and have it dynamically overlay part types on the PCB view. 

[DerekG]

One thing to watch is lead in the solder & the components if shipping to the EU. For one-offs & for prototype/testing purposes, imports into the EU with lead are possible, but for production volumes, lead will often prohibit the importation. In such cases the manufacturer must provide written documentation stating no lead is used in the product. A declaration re CE certification will also be required - but this is usually already required for sales within the US as well so should not be an issue.

[SMT Caddy]

Selling it just in the US, leaving it up to the customer to figure it out if he really wants one seems a sensible route, at least if you don't want to get entangled in international tomfoolery.

Our exact mentality. Circumventing the tax implications in any way is not safe, nor ethical. The laws are generally legislated without consideration for small business; they often carry the burden though!

There are also various other regulations to consider, e.g., CE, CSA, etc., depending on the country/region of interest.

Thank you for your valuable input and discussion.

[mairo]

One big fail in the machine IMHO is that the operator needs to use his/her two hands to operate the machine (correct me if i am wrong)- one hand to move the pick up/place head and the other hand to switch ON/OFF the vacuum. In all $2k+ manual and asemi automatic pick and place machines (e.g. LPKF, Mechatronika, Dima,  FRITSCH, Essemtec, Atco, old OKIs ...) this function is implemented and extremely useful, even a machine that seems to be priced lower than yours has this function:
 http://www.esdshop.eu/shop/?page=vyrobok&psk=34&rozbal=23&id=260&lang=en

I have found that the camera function is only really useful in the LPKF machines as there the operator can lock the rotation on the head and by observing the camera can align very accurately by moving the bed a large pin count/small pitch components.

The machine can get some potential if it includes the automatic pressure ON/OFF function. The small PCB footprint may be good for some, but it also will be limiting factor for others. The feeder count is also very low.

[abraxa]

It does look like a nice product but even if I were in the market for one, I'd still prefer a vacuum pen. The reason is that I'm not impressed by the placement accuracy in the video, especially the 0402 caps. I can do very precise movements when holding a pen while my wrist rests flat on a surface (e.g. a table). With your machine, there is no wrist support since only the arm is supported and the control stick is facing up, not sideways like a pen. I can see how both reduce accuracy, and the video is a nice example of how it takes quite a while for the operator to put down the cap - and even then it's not properly aligned.

I do very much like the idea of the magnetic table but as Mike has pointed out, the lack of overlay on the display would've made it *that* much better. Even more so if the next part would be automatically de-reeled as well. However, with the placement mechanism being the way it is, I still would be concerned about placement speed and quality of the end result.

[EncomLab]

http://vpapanik.blogspot.com/2012/11/low-budget-manual-pick-place.html  This guy has the right idea- and just 100 euro.

[jmelson]

Due to the tax and certification overheads, we decided to stick with the US market for now, but, we plan to partner up with an EU distributor, soon. Sorry for the inconvenience! you can take it up with the regulatory authorities making it rather impossible to work internationally unless you're Google!

Geeeez ...................... this is not the way to run a business.

How hard is it to get an account with FedEx or DHL, pack the item up securely & send it to your customers overseas?

You get a signature on delivery & accept payment by Paypal or into your bank etc before shipping.

Right!  I am a ONE MAN business, and I sell to anywhere in the world, from the US.  Even China and Russia.  (Well, OK, not Palestine and North Korea.)    I have a FedEx account, PayPal and a credit card merchant account, and run  my own web store.  I get a LOT of international orders, it runs around 30 international right now.   My items are less expensive than a P&P machine, but if I can do it, really any business can.

You do have to come up with a harmonized tariff number for your items.  The Dept. of Commerce can help you get the number, but it is a lot faster to look it up on their web site.

Jon

[Mr. Scram]

Right!  I am a ONE MAN business, and I sell to anywhere in the world, from the US.  Even China and Russia.  (Well, OK, not Palestine and North Korea.)    I have a FedEx account, PayPal and a credit card merchant account, and run  my own web store.  I get a LOT of international orders, it runs around 30 international right now.   My items are less expensive than a P&P machine, but if I can do it, really any business can.

You do have to come up with a harmonized tariff number for your items.  The Dept. of Commerce can help you get the number, but it is a lot faster to look it up on their web site.

Jon

Do your products need to comply with regulations as varied and complex as those of electronics and if so, do they? Do you comply with the tax laws of the countries you sell to?

[jmelson]

Right!  I am a ONE MAN business, and I sell to anywhere in the world, from the US.  Even China and Russia.  (Well, OK, not Palestine and North Korea.)    I have a FedEx account, PayPal and a credit card merchant account, and run  my own web store.  I get a LOT of international orders, it runs around 30 international right now.   My items are less expensive than a P&P machine, but if I can do it, really any business can.

You do have to come up with a harmonized tariff number for your items.  The Dept. of Commerce can help you get the number, but it is a lot faster to look it up on their web site.

Jon

Do your products need to comply with regulations as varied and complex as those of electronics and if so, do they? Do you comply with the tax laws of the countries you sell to?

Literally, not munitions.  Maybe a hint of dual-use though, as I sell servo and stepper controller boards and servo amplifiers.  The only place I really got worried is I had a potential customer in Palestine, and I had a strong feeling that the Israelis would not let servo control hardware in, what with the "metal shops" that make rockets to shoot at Israel.  So, I was really glad when that customer just went away.

Tax laws of countries I sell to?  That is the CUSTOMER's problem!  I have had plenty of customers that want me to mark the customs form as a gift or worth $10 or something, I just refuse.  For the small cost of the stuff I sell, many customers get it without paying taxes and duties.  But, in some countries, they have quite high duties, such as 120%.  I just fill out the customs forms truthfully, and let the buyer deal with the customs authorities.

I have to pay taxes to two US states (the one where I reside and one where I sold stuff to a state university) I REALLY don't want to have to pay taxes to foreign countries.  As far as I know, with no presence in any foreign country, no reps or agents, I do not have to deal with any of that.

Jon

[Mr. Scram]

Literally, not munitions.  Maybe a hint of dual-use though, as I sell servo and stepper controller boards and servo amplifiers.  The only place I really got worried is I had a potential customer in Palestine, and I had a strong feeling that the Israelis would not let servo control hardware in, what with the "metal shops" that make rockets to shoot at Israel.  So, I was really glad when that customer just went away.

Tax laws of countries I sell to?  That is the CUSTOMER's problem!  I have had plenty of customers that want me to mark the customs form as a gift or worth $10 or something, I just refuse.  For the small cost of the stuff I sell, many customers get it without paying taxes and duties.  But, in some countries, they have quite high duties, such as 120%.  I just fill out the customs forms truthfully, and let the buyer deal with the customs authorities.

I have to pay taxes to two US states (the one where I reside and one where I sold stuff to a state university) I REALLY don't want to have to pay taxes to foreign countries.  As far as I know, with no presence in any foreign country, no reps or agents, I do not have to deal with any of that.

Jon

It sounds like you're mainly worried about ITAR regulations. Running afoul of those can be a real nightmare, but generally isn't your main concern. Complying with "regular" regulations is generally the issue, which span health and safety, technical and environmental requirements, declarations of conformity and more. Each country or union will have its own variants, with its own gotchas, and as the exporter you will typically be responsible. It might be that you have a bit more leeway on account of making parts, rather than full products, but SMT Caddy won't have that advantage. Regardless, there are a lot of things to take into consideration.

The EU tax laws stipulate that a seller pays VAT in the country of the buyer and not the seller. It might be different for non EU sellers, but it shows that saying that it's the problem of the buyer and calling it a day isn't a surefire approach. To get a glimpse of what laws you'll be dealing with when exporting from the US to the EU, visit the following link. https://2016.export.gov/europeanunion/marketresearch/sellingusproductsandservicesintheeu/index.asp

Anyone could do it, but it sounds it's made easy by ignoring most of what you deal with when trading with various nations. If you do it the correct way, it often isn't quite so easy. People get paid good money for their knowledge of the rules and how to navigate them and that's not because it's trivial.

[Corporate666]

Geeeez ...................... this is not the way to run a business.

How hard is it to get an account with FedEx or DHL, pack the item up securely & send it to your customers overseas?

You get a signature on delivery & accept payment by Paypal or into your bank etc before shipping.

But please, put your video camera on a stand & redo your video like a professional ............. if you are serious about wanting to truly enter this market.

It most definitely is a smart way to run a business.  There is a LOT more to it than just getting the product in the hands of the customer.

There is support, spare parts, being able to respond to emails and phone calls during normal hours, the differences in culture, exchange rates, the differences in power and MANY more differences.  It is much more costly to sell and support product that you sell to customers in other countries - and with all due respect to international folks, people in many countries tend to be *incredibly* cheap... they whine about every penny.  So not only do they not want to pay a premium, they often/usually want things cheaper on the basis that they are having to wait longer or that they're having to pay higher shipping costs or that bank fees or exchange rates cost them more than someone domestically would have paid.

The USA is one of the largest and wealthiest markets in the world, especially for a premium priced product.  If they have enough customers here, then it can be a really smart business decision to focus on the USA market before they think about selling elsewhere, especially so until they are established and able to make a really well-researched and well-executed international effort.

[Corporate666]

Tax laws of countries I sell to?  That is the CUSTOMER's problem!  I have had plenty of customers that want me to mark the customs form as a gift or worth $10 or something, I just refuse.  For the small cost of the stuff I sell, many customers get it without paying taxes and duties.  But, in some countries, they have quite high duties, such as 120%.  I just fill out the customs forms truthfully, and let the buyer deal with the customs authorities.

You are correct.  The issue is the customer that ignores your message on the check-out screen of your web-store saying "please do not ask us to mark this item as a gift, we cannot do so an such requests will be ignored", then writes "please mark this as a gift"... then when your $2,800 pick and place machine arrives, they send you an irate email demanding you pay the 500 Euro import taxes they just got charged - and when you refuse and point to the note on the website, they get more angry and refuse to pay the customs fee.  A day or two later, you get a chargeback on your credit card account or on PayPal, but your $2800 machine sits in customs for months until you get a call asking if you want to pay the $300 to get it shipped back.

Or you constantly get customers complaining about the $500 shipping price... "you're robbing me!" they say, because they can have a heavier item shipped by DHL from China in 3 days for 50 Euro, and you want to charge them ten times that.  So you call DHL but that's the lowest price they offer.  You find that US Postal will ship by Priority Mail for $200, so you start offering that.. and every customer chooses that... but the tracking info is spotty, and half your customers email you demanding to know where the package is even though they have the tracking number and the last scan shows it was received by the postal service in their country.  The next day they say it must be lost and want you to send a replacement... you try to calm them down and wait a bit.  This usually works, but once in a while someone just files a dispute with their credit card... you can't provide a signature that it was delivered, so you lose and $2,800 is deducted from your bank account.   A couple of weeks later you see the tracking is updated and it was delivered!  You contact the customer who doesn't reply to your emails.  You contact the credit card company who tells you the chargeback is already closed and you need to talk to the customer.  You get angry and vow never to ship without a signature again... but now you're back to people screaming bloody murder for "ripping them off" by charging $500 for shipping - even though that is what DHL is charging you.

Putting something in a box and having a courier collect it is the easy part.  Dealing with support and international customers is the hard part.  *Especially* for expensive items.

The right way to do it is to have a distributor in Europe that is buying these things by the container load, or at least by the dozens and having them shipped ocean freight and handling support/spare parts and shipping within the EU.

[jmelson]

 You find that US Postal will ship by Priority Mail for $200, so you start offering that.. and every customer chooses that... but the tracking info is spotty, and half your customers email you demanding to know where the package is even though they have the tracking number and the last scan shows it was received by the postal service in their country.

Yes, the USPS and destination PS is NOTHING like FedEx or other international couriers.  I have plenty of problems with $300 boxes that arrive in the destination country, and the buyer has to call, email, visit the post office, etc. for WEEKS to find out that the box has been sitting in Customs for weeks, and they would eventually get a postcard out to the buyer telling him he owes taxes/duties.  I can't imagine sending a $2000 - $3000 complex machine under those circumstances.

FedEx and other couriers REALLY ride herd on these customs issues, but you PAY for that service.

Jon

[Corporate666]

A new, affordable tool for building your own boards:

I like how it works and I would like a machine like this in my shop for short-run boards and one-offs.  But I'll give some honest feedback.

As a commercial user, I am not looking at the cost the same way as a hobbyist... but I still think $2800 is too much.  I do manufacturing (mechanical + electronic) and I can see it's well designed and made, but I can't help feeling you designed this and went to various local manufacturers and got quotes for parts and then assembled the units and arrived at your final price based on the materials + machined parts + labor + profit.  I can't help feeling you are either paying way too much for your custom machined parts or your design is too complicated and could be dramatically simplified?  For a machine like this, in commercial use, my gut feel is it shouldn't cost more than $2k for a high quality US-made unit.  I'd expect a shitty Chinese one to cost a few hundred or less and be wobbly and not work very well.

The main things that struck me about this in watching the video are..

-I don't like the board holding system.  Maybe it's just not illustrated well in the video, but I can imagine releasing a fully populated board, having it fall down or spring up from holding it while you try to slide off the holder and hitting the X/Y axis rail or my other hand and sending lots of components flying or out of position.  My PnP has 2 parallel rails with rubber belts to load the board in, then the belts stop and the rails squeeze closed to clamp the board.  Maybe an optional vise with machined rails on the jaws and a "twist a quarter turn to magnetically lock" would satisfy me.. I dunno.  I just dislike those little clamps.

-If you're going to the bother of having the computer screen and given the price, I would want to be able to at least program in coordinates for picks and placements and a BOM so that an LED at the feeder location lights up (or a directional arrow on the screen shows where you need to move for the pick), then when you get the component the location of the placement is highlighted with a green box on the video screen or something.  This would let me have someone who doesn't know a damn thing about electronics or circuits use this machine.  Right now, the user needs to know what all the parts are and where they go, so they have to either be an electronics person or they need a build sheet taped to the wall next to the machine and before each pick they need to match the component with what's written on the feeder and then before each placement they need to refer to the build sheet to see where it goes.  That's too much wasted time for a machine that's purpose is to save time.  Yes, this would require encoders on X/Y but that's not too expensive and at this price level that would be a deal breaker for me.

-Lastly, I would never ever buy a machine like this that does not automatically index the feeders!  I hate that you have to push a little button and wait for the feeder to dispense before you can pick.  And I hate that it seems the actual exposed parts are outside the camera FOV while you're pressing the button.  IMO that's a deal breaker.  The feeder should be able to be programmed to move a set amount after each pick.  My Quad uses beam break sensors on each feeder - very cheap and reliable and just detects when the nozzle came down and picked a part. I can see so much time would be wasted constantly indexing feeders the way this is designed.

...and speaking of feeders, I don't want to cut pieces of tape off reels and mount them on separate feeders for this machine.  I'd rather it either work with just pieces of tape stuck to the bed or with tape right off the reel.  The last thing I want to do when I want to run off 10 of some PCB is start by loading up a bunch of feeders for my manual PnP.

Oh - and I specifically would not want it to be able to get online. I would never, ever want to be doing anything other than placing boards with this machine but in a commercial environment, tech-savvy millennials will quickly figure out that the computer on the manual PnP has internet access, and I don't want someone I hired to assemble boards to be screwing around on Facebook while they're supposed to be working 

[Mr. Scram]

Regarding the latter: I've found it better to pay people for their work, rather than their presence.

[Mr. Scram]

Usually most countries assign tax and regulation compliance duty to importers (which is your final buyer if it's a direct international order), so you can sell to any country as long as you are complying to US EAR rules. Will your customer evade use tax? Will you customer risk running a non CE certified gear? That's their responsibility, not yours.
You will be guilty if you help them to dodge tax by declaring fake CN22 value, but other than that, I see no risk at all selling internationally. As a side note, almost all Chinese sellers declare $0 gift on CN22, and so far I've never heard of anyone got caught. Foreign laws don't work in China, and the buyer has plausible deniability. Win win situation for both seller and buyer, and fuck the government.

Again, fairly recent changes to EU tax law put the burden on the seller in regards to VAT, at least for EU to EU sales. The seller needs to establish where the buyer resides, and tax accordingly. If he exceeds a certain revenue for a country, he will be required to register locally as a business and do the paperwork locally. This can happen for each country independently.

It's a mess, but I guess they're trying to prevent companies from selling from low tax countries. It's a huge burden for smaller businesses, though.

[mikeselectricstuff]

...and speaking of feeders, I don't want to cut pieces of tape off reels and mount them on separate feeders for this machine.  I'd rather it either work with just pieces of tape stuck to the bed or with tape right off the reel.  The last thing I want to do when I want to run off 10 of some PCB is start by loading up a bunch of feeders for my manual PnP.

I think the answer to this is simply have a load of width-adjustable tape lanes that can either take cut strips, or be fed from a reel. 
I'm not convinced that manually advancing and dealing with cover tape would  slow  things down enough to justify the cost of anything more complex. With the vision and moving head you don't really need a fixed pick position, so you can feed & peel every few picks.
Or even use one hand for advancing & peeling while the other does the pick/place. Vacuum should be foot-pedal controlled, obviously.

[SMT Caddy]

Good evening/morning folks!

As promised, here's a raw, no fluff clip, building a single board on a panel (the LED controller for SMT Caddy!)

https://youtu.be/WHBm-_ZKOV0

(please forgive the hurried and raw quality!)

I'll take the liberty to reply to various posts without quoting ...

Re. international sales, I believe Mr. Scram has addressed the situation rather accurately. There is tremendous pressure from EU and various member countries, shifting the tax collection burden onto the seller and the selling country. The word is large retailers, e.g., Amazon and ebay, will be collecting VAT on all European sales in not too distant a future. Canada, Australia, etc., will follow suit. I won't repeat the implications Mr. Scram has patiently discussed. Again, there are also certification and regulatory concerns, especially, with anything with electrons flowing through it!

Corporate666, thank you for the suggestions, and, I do agree with a number of your sentiments, there will be a Rev. B, if not a Gen II! But, that's months away. To appreciate the work that goes into a product, and having to recoup some of the cost, there are north of 30 injection molding tools just producing the plastic components for SMT Caddy! We design and build the tools at our facility; we even shoot them here (you can hear the molding machines and robots in the background.)

The tape can be reeled onto the mini-reels, or, loaded in strip format (8, 12 or 16). The cover is peeled and spooled automatically. Pressing the button for a second is not an issue, nor a significant cycle time adder. You have to take my word for it We have never bought a full reel of anything for any electronics we build since no component quantity ever goes beyond a few hundred (we seldom need more than a few dozen of any board). We took our own experience of a few decades as a good setpoint for the average prototyping/short-run requirement. Our reason for providing the mini-reels was to reel up some common components and have present at all times, a 10µF electrolytic, for example. More often than not, the need dictates a strip of cut tape, at least in my experience. Anything beyond this should really go on an automatic P&P.

We haven't had any problems with the magnetic board retainers. Not something that has ever come up among the folks here. Adding a conventional clamping fixture is of course, quite simple. The nice thing with the little magnet retainers (which have a soft, conductive rubber foot, producing ESD path as well as a decent sticktion feature) is when it comes to odd-shaped boards, even circular cutouts, or, multiple little boards being manufactured at the same time.

Manual P&P greatly relies on steady hands; nature of the beast! (Gen II may address this!)

We started with a foot-pedal and elected to switch to a hand button. The other hand has nothing to do anyway The foot-pedal cord can become an issue and your foot keeps losing the pedal, unless you use a massive, captive housing flavor ... matter of preference I think ...

Internet access is not something you can avoid these days! Everyone has a smartphone in their pocket. You can disable the wifi on the controller though.

I hope I've addressed most of the main comments.

[asmi]

The foot-pedal cord can become an issue and your foot keeps losing the pedal, unless you use a massive, captive housing flavor ... matter of preference I think ...

Or just tape the base down to the floor. You guys forgot the first principle of engineering - duct tape is the single most useful tool of any real engineer!

[Kjelt]

I really like it.   
Price is steep but not out of touch if you compare it to other commercial offerings.

A lot of improvements were already mentioned.
One I did not read yet and what would make it even greater for the occasional hobbyist IMO is if you put it in a nice firm aluminium (suit)case.
That way it can be closed and placed anywhere in a cupboard or shelf if you don't need it and get it out the moment you do.
Perhaps you can put the electronics and base in the lower side of the case and have a detachable upperlid.
Not everybody has a spare table or enough room in his shack and this small thing would be a perfect match for that.

[Nauris]

You are correct.  The issue is the customer that ignores your message on the check-out screen of your web-store saying "please do not ask us to mark this item as a gift, we cannot do so an such requests will be ignored", then writes "please mark this as a gift"... then when your $2,800 pick and place machine arrives, they send you an irate email demanding you pay the 500 Euro import taxes they just got charged - and when you refuse and point to the note on the website, they get more angry and refuse to pay the customs fee.  A day or two later, you get a chargeback on your credit card account or on PayPal, but your $2800 machine sits in customs for months until you get a call asking if you want to pay the $300 to get it shipped back.

That is exactly why international customers pay by wire at their expense, only. Credit card and paypal absolutely not accepted on anything over $2000.

... You find that US Postal will ship by Priority Mail for $200, so you start offering that.. and every customer chooses that... but the tracking info is spotty, and half your customers email you demanding to know where the package is even though they have the tracking number and the last scan shows it was received by the postal service in their country.  The next day they say it must be lost and want you to send a replacement...

Customer can buy insurance for his parcel if he so wishes. If he pinched a penny there, so sad.

You get angry and vow never to ship without a signature again... but now you're back to people screaming bloody murder for "ripping them off" by charging $500 for shipping - even though that is what DHL is charging you.

Well, there is plenty of free space in your email folder, ain't there?

You see, international trade ain't hard at all. It is just about having the proper attitude.

[DerekG]

You see, international trade ain't hard at all. It is just about having the proper attitude.

Quite right.

My company is only small with just a couple of employees & we ship product overseas all the time without hassles. We offer support from our Australian Office. We have an address in the USA for customers to ship any faulty product to which then sends it back to Australia for examination. The big thing to remember is that your product must be RELIABLE. The costs involved in warranty claims therefore becomes insignificant compared to the profits made by selling to overseas customers.

[Mr. Scram]

Quite right.

My company is only small with just a couple of employees & we ship product overseas all the time without hassles. We offer support from our Australian Office. We have an address in the USA for customers to ship any faulty product to which then sends it back to Australia for examination. The big thing to remember is that your product must be RELIABLE. The costs involved in warranty claims therefore becomes insignificant compared to the profits made by selling to overseas customers.

Does your product require certifying, conformity testing or anything similar and, if yes, is it done?

[DerekG]

Does your product require certifying, conformity testing or anything similar and, if yes, is it done?

Yes.

We are required to meet the Australian & IIRC/ISO Standards. This includes CE compliance testing. We also build lead free product for everything being shipped to the EU. Each product exported carries a copy of these signed certifications. We do state in our Terms & Conditions of Sale however that is it the responsibility of the overseas purchaser to ensure these certifications meet their import requirements. We are outside of the EU & so we do not need to register for VAT. This gets automatically charged (if applicable) on importation by the freight carrier.

For many countries we accept credit cards & Paypal for small value shipments & money into our bank account for larger shipments. For countries in South America, Africa, Russia etc we only accept payment into our bank account before shipping.

We do get some prospective purchasers from known non-paying countries that complain about depositing direct into our account. We have a special file in our email system for these. It is called the "junk" file.

[rx8pilot]

Joining the conversation.....

Short and misplld from my mobile......

[amirm]

Manual P&P greatly relies on steady hands; nature of the beast! (Gen II may address this!)

First, my compliments on a simple solution to this problem.  I love my CNC machine but programming the beast is always a pain. 

My question regarding above is hand strain.  How long can you work this way without the wrist giving out?

[Psi]

The ideal price point for this sort of thing is in the $300 range.

[Kjelt]

The ideal price point for this sort of thing is in the $300 range.

Nonsense, the BOM would be around $100, for that you can not even commercially build something with a camera , vacuum and 1 electrical feeder.
IMO if you build this yourself from scratch and pay yourself $10 an hour it would cost you more than $800.- being a conservative estimate.
I am not sure what your wage is but I bet it is more than $10 

[Mr. Scram]

The ideal price point for this sort of thing is in the $300 range.

Ideally it would be free, but there's an obvious problem with that.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I think a better solution would be to make it modular and user upgradeable.
Base system is just sliders & pickup - no electronics.
You can then add magnifer, feeders, encoders for tracking overlays.
That way you have a low entry cost, and as users find what they need as they start using it, they can upgrade to suit their needs.

[sokoloff]

Due to the tax and certification overheads, we decided to stick with the US market for now, but, we plan to partner up with an EU distributor, soon. Sorry for the inconvenience! you can take it up with the regulatory authorities making it rather impossible to work internationally unless you're Google!

Geeeez ...................... this is not the way to run a business.

On the contrary, I think this is exactly how to run a business.

Start in one, well-defined, sufficiently sized market and figure out if you can get product-market fit in that market enough to turn a profit.
Don't get distracted by all of the things that you could do, but focus on the things you must do to reach cashflow breakeven.

If it proves out in the US (which is a sufficiently sized market), then you can decide to tackle another product/SKU, another geography, another customer segment, or whatever other next step is, but you'll kill yourself trying to address all SKUs, all segments, and all geos at once. If you succeed in your first part of the addressable market, you can expand later. If you spread yourself too thin from day one, you run a higher risk of failure, IMO.

How hard is it to get an account with FedEx or DHL, pack the item up securely & send it to your customers overseas?

Not hard, but this is less than 5% of what it takes to really sell a product into all states in Europe. How do you handle support? How do you handle service? Do you translate the manuals? Are there any specific health and safety concerns for those given states? What about the EU laws on merchantability and fitness? Can you be sued in a random state in Europe now? Will you need to offer customer support by phone during the European workday?

But please, put your video camera on a stand & redo your video like a professional ............. if you are serious about wanting to truly enter this market.

100% agree there.

[lundmar]

A cheap affordable pick and place machine, great...

I was watching the video and thinking "nice, now he is teaching the machine how to do the first pick and place..." then after some repeat placings I realized it was manual??

I'm sorry, but it seems a bit silly to do all that engineering into what is seemingly well constructed mechanics and then skip the the last step of putting in step motors and control to make it automatic.

My suggestion, add the step motors and control, ditch the custom screen in favor of a mobile application that can be used with any Android device and you have a winner product.

[Mr. Scram]

A cheap affordable pick and place machine, great...

I was watching the video and thinking "nice, now he is teaching the machine how to do the first pick and place..." then after some repeat placings I realized it was manual??

I'm sorry, but it seems a bit silly to do all that engineering into what is seemingly well constructed mechanics and then skip the the last step of putting in step motors and control to make it automatic.

My suggestion, add the step motors and control, ditch the custom screen in favor of a mobile application that can be used with any Android device and you have a winner product.

Automating something like this isn't a trivial task. It could easily double or triple the development time and costs.

[tszaboo]

Not hard, but this is less than 5% of what it takes to really sell a product into all states in Europe. How do you handle support? How do you handle service? Do you translate the manuals? Are there any specific health and safety concerns for those given states? What about the EU laws on merchantability and fitness? Can you be sued in a random state in Europe now? Will you need to offer customer support by phone during the European workday?

You are applying your thinking to the Europeans. It doesnt work that way. In the EU you dont sue companies, if your microwave kills your cat. Also, in EU, people have a basic understanding of maps,and realize if a phone number is from the USA.
You can let a company like Amazon handle all the logistics. I can order the EEVBLOG BM235 and the HVP70 from amazon.de. A single person was able to solve all these problems for products, that are required to go through a bunch of certification.
It's just... You know americans USA people think the rest of the world doesn't matter. We get it. So come up with a lot more poor excuse please.

[mikeselectricstuff]

A cheap affordable pick and place machine, great...

I was watching the video and thinking "nice, now he is teaching the machine how to do the first pick and place..." then after some repeat placings I realized it was manual??

I'm sorry, but it seems a bit silly to do all that engineering into what is seemingly well constructed mechanics and then skip the the last step of putting in step motors and control to make it automatic.

My suggestion, add the step motors and control, ditch the custom screen in favor of a mobile application that can be used with any Android device and you have a winner product.

Automating something like this isn't a trivial task. It could easily double or triple the development time and costs.

Using a phone would be a terrible idea, as the latency would be poor

[rx8pilot]

The other hand has nothing to do anyway The foot-pedal cord can become an issue and your foot keeps losing the pedal, unless you use a massive, captive housing flavor ... matter of preference I think ...

Just before I got my P&P line together, I was manually assembling a LOT of boards. I had made up a lot of bit and pieces to help the process and at one point - put together a manual picking machine similar in concept to this one. The first lesson I learned is that two-handed operation was dramatically more accurate and fast than just one hand. I had rigged the system so that the x/y position could be held and fine-tuned with one hand while the other operated theta and drop. Since the system moves so freely, it was really important to have one hand effectively operating as a brake for X/Y movement as you lower the part, make the final alignment, and release it.

Personally, I do not like the foot pedal either. Pushing my foot down would put just enough pressure on my body that I had to compensate with the position of the part. I was in a typical rolling and swiveling lab chair and that may not be a problem if I was more locked down - but I like my moveable chair.

On the business end of the conversation.....

I probably would have been a target customer a while back when I needed a stepping stone to a full P&P system. I lost a lot of nights, weekends, and holidays trying to get a dozen 500 part boards assembled manually. With that in mind - I may have just purchased this without any further thought to ease the painful situation. I started my business by restricting sales to Los Angeles only so that I could personally participate in the customer experience and fix problems as they came up. My customers knew that I was making a new product and they bought into it because I was close by. The feedback and experience I got from that went right back into the design and it improved dramatically and quickly. I slowly increased my reach as I gained confidence in the product and I now sell worldwide - having product on every inhabited continent. Starting off with planned geographical boundaries is not a bad idea.

My issues would have been the number of parts you can get into the machine at a time and how quickly they can be swapped out. My manual process had a combination of loose part trays and cut strip holders that were arranged in the order of the BOM so I just went down the line picking parts with a placement cue system on a monitor to remind me what and where things go. To be honest - I was pretty quick. The parts for an entire board were all on a tray so I could put one tray away and grab another and boom.....ready for the next PCB design. The position of the parts to the board made it easy for the way I moved and I literally free handed the pickups and drops with a vacuum pen and a stereo microscope. This allowed 0402 and .5mm QFN's even after a big cup of coffee. The downside (and it is a big downside) is that I could not pass that process on to someone else very easily. It was a setup based on my own personal preferences for sure.

I am curious if your system would be much faster or easier in the end. It definitely looks less intimidating than what I did in terms of actually placing the parts.

[SMT Caddy]

... I am curious if your system would be much faster or easier in the end. It definitely looks less intimidating than what I did in terms of actually placing the parts.

The one hand vs. two hands went through a war of wits here before we settled on this approach! Our first prototype utilized a two-handed head, similar to a CIF machine (if you're familiar with their products). I agree re. the accuracy with two hands, but, reach becomes a concern since your whole torso tends to travel rather than just the arm. And, longer P&P sessions become rather tiring with the two-handed head; feels like you just came back from the gym! It wasn't an obvious choice to go one direction or the other; it became a democratic vote - this approach won by far better margin than our current president

I think most folks will be sitting in a roll around chair, at least business folks, which makes the foot-pedal quite annoying.

I can tell you that after many similar long hours hunched over a microscope with tweezers in (very cramped) claws, sitting behind the SMT Caddy is a sheer joy! The full panel you see in the video is similar to a 500 count board, and any of us can put one together in roughly an hour (more or less, depending on experience). There are 0.5mm pitch leadless packages and the passives are generally 0603 (0402 doesn't make it much different). I hired a few college student summer interns a couple of years back and trained them to build a batch of boards the old-fashioned way. The yield was at best 60% for functional boards, and maybe 80% after rework of obvious problems. We rarely lose a board in fab with SMT Caddy.

The reason we stayed with 20 resident feeders is primarily reach. e.g., I'm not a big guy, 5' 8", and repeated reaching beyond the farthest feeders will probably make it a bit uncomfortable for me. Feeders swap out in seconds, and, setting up a new tape in a feeder is basically a one minute task. So, batching components and swapping feeders is really pretty quick and convenient, while keeping the machine footprint small. If you're a power user (a PCB prototype assembly job-shop, e.g.), you'd do well to have a bunch of feeders pre-packed with the most common components to reduce the number of tape changeovers.

I've noticed that the arm-rest is used differently by different folks. I like to rest my forearm on the rest and keep the wrist floating; my lefty machinist keeps his distal wrist joint on the rest, etc. Generally speaking, couple-hour-long sessions behind the P&P are quite reasonable. If you need to run with it the whole day, a break here and there is called for. Not having to deal with microscopes and magnifying glasses, and being able to switch between natural view and magnified view by just changing focus, dramatically reduces strain.

A bunch of folks have compared this to an auto P&P; it really doesn't apply! If you're building a few of one board and a couple of another, as everyone in the business does in development or for one-off needs, you'd sit behind SMT Caddy any day of the week before even thinking about approaching your auto P&P! The setup overhead is just not worth it. You need various tools for various needs; this one addresses the particular prototyping need.

The comparable big company systems in the market, selling for similar dollars and way beyond, don't offer a fraction of the features SMT Caddy does. I looked at Novastar, CIF, Essemtec, Manncorp, etc., long and hard and couldn't convince myself to buy any of them, though many businesses do. That's why we decided there was a hole in the market which needed fillin'! It has been a lot of work and investment, and although there's always room for improvement, we're pretty happy with the end result.

[jmelson]

You have very interesting meaning of word "affordable". $2800 is not affordable since many automatic PnP machines are in the same price ballpark.

* asmi went back to manually place parts...

OK, just a point of reference.  10 years ago, I bought a 10 year old high-end pick and place machine, with a bunch of feeders, for $3600.  It handles anything from 0603 up to 20+ mm square ICs.  it is "old school" with no vision, but many machines of that vintage had broken vision systems.  It will do over 3600 CPH on the passives, and slows down to about 600 cph when it needs to use the alignment station for the larger chips.  I've done several thousand boards with it.
I have had to do really minimal maintenance on it, an optical sensor broke, some hoses cracked, that was just about it.

I can't IMAGINE doing all that with a manual P&P, and I didn't end up spending a whole lot more than your unit.  (I DID have to wait for a good deal to come my way, I admit that!)  And, now the Chinese are making a number of full-auto P&P machines at crazy low prices.

Jon

[lundmar]

Automating something like this isn't a trivial task. It could easily double or triple the development time and costs.

That is true. However, I don't think it is as difficult as people might think. I realize that a big part of doing an automatic pick and place machine is creating the control software but there are ways to reduce the software development effort using open source components. As a professional sw engineer my view is of course biased.

Using a phone would be a terrible idea, as the latency would be poor

That is true if you were to use the mobile phone for controlling the picker/placer head position. However, for simple hand-eye-coordination as it is used today, I think the latency is low enough using a decent modern mobile phone. Saving the display would help keep the cost down. But now that they already include a display lets keep it.


I really love the mechanical design of the machine - its a clean an simple industrial design. I also think that a 2nd generation or variant of this machine screams for an automatic pick and place feature.

I noticed that the display device is featuring a raspberry pi linux system. The way I would upgrade this machine to an automatic pick-n-place machine would be to roughly do the following:

Add 2 stepper motors for xy plane position control
Add 1 small stepper motor for picker/placer head height adjustment (z axis height)
Add 1 small stepper motor for picker/placer head rotation adjustment (rotation in the xy-plane)
Add a calibration pad with colored background between reels and PCB table
Add a PCB with:
 - 4 channel stepper motor controller
 - I/O for simple control of reel wheel motors
 - Suitable microcontroller
 - USB interface for connecting to RPI

I would install opencv on the raspberry pi for computer vision control of the picker/placer. I believe the control software can be done relatively simple:

Learning procedure:
1. Register button press to start
2. Register button press to capture pickup position (xyz position)
3. Register button press to capture position on top of colored calibration pad
   - Use openCV to trace the contours of the component to calculate component center in the xy plane.
   - Save outline of contours (for later calculation of required rotational offset, if any)
4. Register button press to capture placement position
   - Use xy-position of calculated component center as target (opencv tracking)
   - Save z-axis height
5. Register button press to end pick-n-place procedure

Pick n place procedure:
1. Pick up component using pickup position
2. Move picker/placer head to calibration pad position
  - Use opencv to trace the contours of the component to calculate xy center offset and rotational offset
  - Rotate picker/placer head if necessary
3. Move picker/placer head into place position in xy-plane
  - Adjust xy position by previously calculated xy-offset
4. Lower picker/placer head to final z-axis to place component

Of course, the procedures can be improved and refined using opencv to e.g. recognize PCB solder pad placements and adjust accordingly but I think the above basic procedures will suffice.

There would also be a few additional steps to control the reel wheel motors to automatically feed components but I believe that is solvable with opencv too.

Just my 2 cents worth

[Kjelt]

Thats all great but steppers and the rest brings the price to $4k or even higher and there are already many chinese and other machines in that marketsegment.

[mrpackethead]

I have a dima FP-600 in my workshop, which has done a LOT of work and it still gets used along side our PNP machines, for various tasks.. ( sometomes an odd part that just can't be machine placed.. )

Having watched your video it seems really slow to use this machine.. The 'double' touch when your picking up just doe'snt seem quite right..     i regulary place quite fine pitched parts and dont' need a camera. Just good lighting.. 

[mpi]

I always get a laugh out of the hand-wringing about "Exports! Compliance!". Meanwhile those of us who do sell globally just figure it out and do it.

Most of these hurdles are based on FUD, "worst case scenarios", or just plain wrong, and (IMHO) just serve as a handy excuse for those who don't want to go that last painful step -- selling (I was one of these people for the longest time).

As for the SMT Caddy -- too expensive for what it does. The moving display makes sense though -- like having a magnifying glass on the end of the tweezers. That, combined with a separate display showing the PCB and placement (something like this) and an LED indicator on the feeder showing the next part to place would make it very interesting. Oh, and make it $199.  Seriously though, under $1K.

[Psi]

The ideal price point for this sort of thing is in the $300 range.

Nonsense, the BOM would be around $100, for that you can not even commercially build something with a camera , vacuum and 1 electrical feeder.
IMO if you build this yourself from scratch and pay yourself $10 an hour it would cost you more than $800.- being a conservative estimate.
I am not sure what your wage is but I bet it is more than $10 

Sure you could. The quallity wouldnt be as good. But it would be good enough to be very useful. And it would open up sales to hobbyists and small home labs.

I really think you would make more money selling higher volumes of a cheaper unit.

Just my 2c

[jmelson]

You have very interesting meaning of word "affordable". $2800 is not affordable since many automatic PnP machines are in the same price ballpark.

* asmi went back to manually place parts...

$2800?  YIKES!  I have a Quad QSA-30A that I bought at auction.  Including shipping, repairs and accessories, I've got just a little more than that invested so far, and it is up and running.  It will do over 10K parts/hour, fully automatically, with vision registration of both the board fiducials and part alignment.
I just CAN'T imagine why anyone would pay this much for a machine where they still have to place parts by hand!

Jon

[sokoloff]

To some extent, it's a different tool, even though both place parts.

It's very common for small, desktop or benchtop milling machines to cost more than much more capable used Bridgeport mills.
Bridgeport buyers can't understand why someone would pay so much more for so much less capability.
Desktop mill buyers can't understand why they should buy a much larger machine if all they need is to mill flats or small pockets on small parts.
Both could quite easily be "correct".

[ar__systems]

$2800?  YIKES!  I have a Quad QSA-30A

Please stop bragging about stuff you got for cheap. Not everyone has time to spend on
repairing old equipment. It is a very poor reference.

[Mechatrommer]

agree, just leave it be, its been 3 years, no point necroing this thread, whatever will happen, will happen the force will find its balance... btw i just use my $100 34MP 1080P 60FPS HDMI USB Industrial Electronic Microscope with 28" monitor to do stuffs.. good for like 0.5mm pitch RGT package and down to 0402.... if i can sell my stuffs and collect $2800, i'll find the one that can do automatic, or else build one myself if i got more time...