Pick and Place Machine TVM802A / TVM802B

[ServoKit]

The rotation happens directly after picking the part, before alignment, I've written about it earlier in the thread. 0.65mm definitely works. With larger parts keep in mind that the vision system has a limit of 20x20mm.

Regards, Axel

[protoneer]

The rotation happens directly after picking the part, before alignment, I've written about it earlier in the thread. 0.65mm definitely works. With larger parts keep in mind that the vision system has a limit of 20x20mm.

Thanks Axel, the micro's I am looking at are 14x14mm and at 45 degrees its just under 20mm(Opposing corners).

[ServoKit]

Once you get your machine, please report the software version so that we can keep track of it (no download section on the mfg. web page). I'm  on V2.1, date 26.11.2015.

Regards, Axel

[protoneer]

Will do...

[ServoKit]

Happy to report that I did the first run with our prototype PCBs today. So far only resistors and stuff because I haven't finished the tray setup yet. No issues with the feeders, perfect locating of fids (I've used Lady Ada's fids for Eagle, one in bottom/left, other in upper/right corner). Will post video tomorrow or so, once I'm satisfied with the tray layout.

Regards, Axel

[electrfunch]

@Axel I receivedthe TVM802A yesterday and the software version in the CD are "English-20150928-V2.08" and "English-20151126-V2.10(Trial Version)", have you tried both? Any noticeable diference?

My machine is still in the box as I'm moving it to a new location...

Cheers,
Paul

[ServoKit]

Same here, so far I didn't notice any difference.

Regards, Axel

[ServoKit]

Follow-up on the microstepping: To move the crosshair across a fiducial (dia. 1mm) with the cursor keys in "Low speed" requires 32 clicks. With .25mm movement per step that comes out at 8x microstepping.

Regards, Axel

[ar__systems]

Ah, you are correct. Well ok, then there is hope

[sergeil]

Hey folks. Sergei from Fotokite here. Just got to finally play with our TVM802B.

Background: We got it to do small proto builds of the Fotokite Phi and various new Pro products (anything delivered is professionally assembled, but for internal testing this just takes too long). Big thanks to Axel/Servokit for his in-depth blog review of the machine that convinced us to take the jump. I've done lots of hand soldering, stenciling, and oven baking before for prototypes, and have visited CMs in various places including Shenzhen, but never used a pick&place myself. New experience! :-)

Ordering/shipping was *fast*. Paid with paypal, machine shipped next day, arrived in 6 days (ordered Thursday, received Wed). Built quality looks good, only complaint is a) the CD and b) holy crap, spelling mistakes.

Same software versions as electrfunch.

I'm still going through the docs but from initial runs I think something is weird with the Y coordinate system: when going through "measure" and "goto stacks" it goes to the right places, but when running the example program it runs into the Y- limit at full speed. Perhaps there is a coordinate offset I haven't discovered yet. Also weird: it can detect the small nozzle in the calibration but doesn't seem to find the big one -- if I play with thresholds it'll find the large one but not the small one. Not sure here .

There is a pressure sensor (nice touch), but by default the PnP program doesn't use it. Not clear what its purpose is.

It's loud as hell, both in movement and when the pump is on.

Boards / stencils arriving next week along with reels, hope to test it in action soon..

[rwb]

Sergeil  Thanks for sharing your experinces with this machine also.

Can you tell us or show us the kind of boards your going to be making on the machine?

I'm interested in how well this machine can place .5mm pitch IC parts. Do you plan on running any of these?

[sergeil]

We've got lqfp64 (.5mm pitch), lots of 0402s, and I think smaller leadless, including several parts with hidden pins and and a USB-C connector with hidden pins. We've been able to solder everything by hand with a good hot air rework station, microscope, patience and some tears  . Around 300 components per board, most on one side, we plan to place around 270 with the PnP, rest (singles/easy ones) by hand. Got a stencil setup + IR oven from China as well - not worried about oven but stencil setup needs improvement. Anyway hopefully a smoother process than tweezers + microscope + tears

Would love to get hints regarding the Y axis from the "veterans", though maybe it's a matter of clicking around the software...

[mikeselectricstuff]

There is a pressure sensor (nice touch), but by default the PnP program doesn't use it. Not clear what its purpose is.

It should be used to detect a mis-pick, so it can retry

[rwb]

Sweet, can't wait to see how well the machine handles those smaller and fine pitch parts.

How do you plan on placing 270 parts when the machine only holds 30 or so reels + the trays?

I also have designs with more than 100 parts so it's ruff that these machines only hold 30% of the required parts to get the whole board completed.

How soon do you plan on running the first board?

Dude your drone looks sweet!

[sergeil]

Thanks. 300 actual physical components, but around 60 types of parts. The TVM802B has 46 reels + whatever trays. Too late to look at BoM now but if I recall correctly doing PnP on the top-occurring 25 or so gives us 270 components placed.

That's actually the Fotokite Pro, this will be used for the next-gen Fotokite Phi build.. Don't wanna turn this (very useful) thread into a Fotokite discussion, but if you want to learn more check the (now long finished) campaign page: http://igg.me/at/fotokite

Actual first build expected Tue/Wed. If anyone wants to give me some hints or tell me what the heck is up with the example program/Y axis... would be most grateful. P.S. we have 2 Ultimaker 3D printers and that's my plan for both securing our (non-rectangular, non-panelized) PCB in the machine and for making trays.

[rwb]

Sweet! Looking forward to seeing how the build goes.

How many boards do you have to run?

[ServoKit]

Hi sergeil, welcome to the club!

Pressure sensor is for dangling / missing parts. You have to enable it in the Machine setup (last tab) and for the individual part in the parts list. If the sensor then detects a "leak" (because part is dangling or not there) it drives to the dump at the right of the tray and drops the part. It then tries 5x to get the part right, after that an alert comes up. Sensor is very sensitive, would only work reliably for smaller parts on smaller nozzles.

Re. nozzle calibration: Make sure to switch of ceiling lights etc., the up-looking camera is very sensitive. Possibly a 802B thing because the camera is at a different position. Also could be the Juki nozzles.

Re. y-axis. Not sure about that. If it's only with the sample data it's probably a setup issue (look at machine setup and make sure that the feeder positions are at least sensible; look at part list while placing: It highlights done parts so you can narrow it down) or again specific to 802B.

Re. noise: Movement noise comes with some combinations of overall speed and individual part's speed, especially a lower speeds. Let it run faster. Also the round alu bar on which the reels sit tends to vibrate.

Ultimaker here, too. Good man.

Regards, Axel

[mikeselectricstuff]

I also have designs with more than 100 parts so it's ruff that these machines only hold 30% of the required parts to get the whole board completed.

..and is there really no scope to do some engineering to significantly reduce that BOM?

[ServoKit]

First real production run with the TVM:

https://youtu.be/gqUc85uAubs

We don't have panels yet, instead I'm using four separate PCBs. Fiducials in lower right corner of each PCB (one fid detection takes a little longer because I accidentally smeared glue over it...).

For some reason the two caps (at lower edge of board) are off by the same amount on all four PCBs. Not sure what the reason is, could be the feeder setup or an error in the exporter ULP. - Update: The tape was a little off in the feeder, half a sprocket diameter. Dang.

Took me four weeks to get to this point but now I'm a happy camper.

Regards, Axel
 

[rwb]

I also have designs with more than 100 parts so it's ruff that these machines only hold 30% of the required parts to get the whole board completed.

..and is there really no scope to do some engineering to significantly reduce that BOM?

I just closely followed the EVM designs in hopes of keeping the same performance I get when testing the EVM boards. At first I thought nothing of the part numbers per board until I started looking at the possibility of buying one of these smaller PNP machines.

[rwb]

Axel looks good.

I'm surprised you not using Vision on the IC parts. Looks like its doing a great job.

Is that all the parts you need to place on your board or is this just a quick test.

[ServoKit]

With the bespoke trays, vision is no longer needed (except for the fids). Huge speed-up. Missing at the moment are just three small parts (SOT size, 8mm tapes) which we don't have on reels yet and the TTH stuff, obviously. The machine table is now bolted to the (brick-)wall, so even at 100% nothing moves or shakes.

As for your boards, you might have to daisy chain machines; even the larger, still affordable, Mechatronikas only go to 64 feeders or so.

Regards, Axel

[Koen]

sergeil please, where have you bought yours ? You can reply in private if you wish.

Thanks for the videos and updates guys.

[sergeil]

Whoa looks great. Can confirm, shake is an issue: ours is on what we thought is a sturdy table, but still moves all over the place.

Update on Y-axis: i did rough manual alignment of the fiducials, resulting in a Y offset of ~300. Once this was done I was able to run the example program (including machine vision fiducial alignment). *However* turns out my CSV file has all sorts of nasty characters (unicode encoding from Chinese?) which I had to fix -- otherwise program crashes. In some ways it's the perfect setup: documentation is there, but broken, but good enough to point in the right direction and force you to understand exactly what's going on :-)

@Axel, any chance you can share top-level specs for the trays (hole pattern, pickup height?)? Did you take any special precautions for ESD for the trays? Have you been able to get successful reliable pickups from cut tape in your custom cut tape trays?

I got the machine via Aliexpress, http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Small-SMT-Machines-Pcb-Assembly-Small-SMT-Pick-and-Place-Machine-With-Camera-TVM802B/32499850720.html (i'm in no way affiliated with the store and don't benefit from referrals).

[Ichan]

Nice video Axel, i wonder why all of this kind machine manufacturer had no will to make video like this - the video of their own machine making real things.

I think this machine will fill the gap between Neoden TM2xx and their N4 machine.

Have you try the machine with components with plastic tape? Like thick smd capacitor or SOT23 in 8mm plastic reel?

-ichan