Pick and Place with removable banks of feeders

[enp13]

In the last few months there seems to have been a step change in the price/performance of hobbyist and semi pro pick and place machines such as the Charmhigh CHMT36VA, CHMT48VB, Neoden 3V, and the Qihe TVM802A and TVM802B, offering various numbers of drag feeders for ~$3000-6000 and the "next class up" machines CHMT530P4, CHMT560P4, TVM925 etc (I've probably missed a few variants) which use Yamaha air-powered feeders and 4 heads for ~$6000-9000 (plus feeders).  All of the above are faster than anyone really needs and use up-looking cameras to achieve very good placement down to 0402.

So, a simple question: Am I right in thinking none of these machines allow you to quickly swap out an entire bank of reels like a production machine allows, i.e., it is very time consuming to swap between runs of boards that have vastly different sets of components because every reel must be changed one by one and carefully checked that none got mixed up in this process?  This seems a shame.  I can see why a bank swap would be tricky for the drag style ones since the drag guides are part of the machine, not the reel holder, so are always going to be a fiddly thing to set up.  But surely for the "next class up" it would have been easy to allow the frame that the bank of Yamaha feeders clamps to be removable from the machine by, say, undoing 4 bolts?  Has anybody tried a mod like this?

The application I have in mind is using it in a service environment for doing semi-regular short runs for small or hobby customers where your larger commercial machines are busy on large jobs but a small machine like those above could be set up within minutes using a custom bank of reels for that particular board which sit in storage between runs.  This would allow an agile just-in-time service for your customer instead of them having to commit to large runs for slow-selling product lines or lines under rapid test/development cycles and they could even do minor changes between runs for little or no cost such as change a couple of components (just add those reels to the bank) or a run of a low-spec version of the product where some components aren't placed (leave the reels on the bank anyway).

[rx8pilot]

Most production machines do not support banks. My machine had the option but it was very expensive. Each empty bank was quite pricey and held about 25 8mm feeders. Between the cost of the feeders and the quick change hardware, I decided to figure out how long it takes to to swap 25 feeders.

Assuming the feeders are loaded and organized on my feeder rack....it takes about 3-4 minutes to swap them (all 25). Not worth the complexity and expense of the bank system. The bank system would perhaps save 2 minutes? I am looking elsewhere for time saving ideas.



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

[jmelson]

Well, I just do a complete setup, run off some number of boards, and then tear down and re-set for the next run.  I have about 15 different boards, some mostly analog, some mostly digital, and not a whole lot of common parts.  It doesn't really take all that long to do the whole setup.
Changing out feeders without changing the reels ON the feeders would be faster, but I really don't have enough 8mm feeders to even do that.

Jon

[tboicey]

I bought the Neoden 3V Advanced and specifically got the 44 feeder advanced model to avoid changing tapes as much, but it's not really that hard.

When initially loading a NEW tape, it's easiest if the parts are cheap passives and you can just throw away a few inches of parts to load the tape into the feeder and pull back the clear cover. It's a bit slower if parts are valuable and you need to attach a dummy leader. (i use audio splicing tape)

My other concern about changing tapes often is that many component reels are not labelled. It's a bit stressful to pull off hundreds of dollars of SOT23 tapes and be sure to put them back into the original envelopes. You could do a lot of damage in a hurry building boards with components that were mislabeled.

[xdave]

I use Chinese SMT660s (essentially HW-T6-64Fs) that take 64 Yamaha CL-type feeders.

I made up a few trolleys that hold the Yamaha CL-type feeders that has each position numbered the same as each side of the machine, with a blank hole for the camera gap.  I can then set up each trolley and swap them on/off matching the numbers for each one as I go.  It reduces the risk of mixing up feeders, particularly when only part loading a machine where gaps are left which is when it is very easy to load into the wrong position, and it doesn't take very long to swap over.

The trolleys are just standard 30mm aluminium profile for the frame, with ESD wheels and a piece of 115x16mm aluminium plate with 6mm diameter 80mm apart holes drilled in it.  I also added labels with the machine numbers on, and which side it was.  I had the mill that cut the aluminium plate drill the 6mm holes, and a quick polish with a belt sander imparted a nice brushed finish and radiused the holes.

The materials cost about half the Chinese feeder trolleys, and the end result is better built and customisable.  e.g. I put a table on the top which holds trays and checklists/paper, a small bin hanging on one end, and a pair of scissors on a retracting cord to cut off the waste tape from the removed reels.

If you do a lot of swaps then given the low cost of the Chinese made copies of Yamaha feeders nowadays you can just buy enough feeders to have them permanently loaded up with different components to save the losses from loading a used reel.  The 8x4mm feeders are about 50 USD if you negotiate, and up to 16mm are still < 70USD.

[flasonsmts]

for pick and place machine, it's better to use Juki yamaha Samsung's, if your budget is not enough, thought about the second hand one.