Author Topic: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC  (Read 75670 times)

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Offline rx8pilotTopic starter

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Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« on: March 01, 2015, 09:08:21 pm »
I think this will be the beginning of a journey, so I thought I would start a thread for it. I just purchased a Quad IVc with 55 feeders to help boost my small operation. This is to help me move out of hand placing which I have been doing for too long now. Most of my PCB's are dense and double sided. Some with 300+ components and fine pitch. The boards seem to change a lot, so I have to do them in small batches which is slow and expensive for contract manufacturing.

The Quad IVC is a 90's era workhorse that runs on MS-DOS software. Fortunately, I am well versed in the DOS world so that by itself is not a problem. The old computers and custom electronics have me crossing my fingers a little. Obviously the goal is to save time, not spend it all fiddling with a machine. The Quads are very well supported by PPM (at a cost of course). There are many upgrades and spares available if/when the need arises.

I have poured over every imaginable solution to pick_n_place for low budget operations. DIY, Madell, SMTmax, TM22A/TM240A, etc, etc. Many hours spent weighing the pro's and cons. My thinking up until today was to get buy the LitePlacer DIY kit https://www.eevblog.com/forum/manufacture/pick-and-place-machine-kit-with-vision/ to get my prototypes and pilot runs done. After that, the goal was to buy a Quad machine from PPM that is totally updated and warranted for one year. The Quad machines are designed like tanks and can run continuously and have room for large numbers of feeders. A quad will certainly carry all of my pick and place needs for quite some time (if it works). There are also enough feeders to have the machine setup for ALL of PCB's at the same time.

At the price that I paid, I can repair and replace a lot of expensive parts and still come out ahead. The hope is that it works reasonably well right away. We shall see.
If it can get through the first 100 sets of PCBs, the cost will have been covered relative to the contract manufacture costs. Hopefully I can post some pics and write a little about the experience of finding and buying a PnP machine that is intended to make money. For this to work, it has to be a great balance of low initial cost and reasonable long-term fiddling.

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Offline Corporate666

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #1 on: March 02, 2015, 04:19:20 am »
Got your PM - will send my contact info over your way.

I'm very curious to keep up with your progress thread.  I'm guessing you bought the one on eBay with the PPM software upgrade?  If so, you got an amazing deal... I didn't even see that on eBay and if I had, I'd have bought it :)

I am not familiar with the PPM software - I just saw a demo of it, but haven't used it.  But it uses the same base machine, it's just an upgraded "main board" and software.

Where in the country are you?  I'm not too far from PPM - but honestly, they charge (IMO) absolutely outrageous prices so I use them as little as possible, so if you're nowhere near that's no problem.

Assuming you got the eBay one, it looks like the table has been modified for a specific use.   That's one of the big pro's of these machines...they are very configurable.  It looks like the conveyor rails have been moved 6-10 inches off to the right (or maybe even shortened?).  Do you know how boards load - do they feed both into and out of the right side?  That would be something you could set up in the PPM software, I guess.

Be sure you level the machine well (ideally, use a machinists level, not one from the hardware store). The more unlevel the machine is, the more it's working harder in one direction than another. 

Anyway, great buy - interested in how things go :)
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Offline rx8pilotTopic starter

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #2 on: March 02, 2015, 06:04:07 am »
That is the one.....eBay super special and it's only a short drive for me to pick up.

Can't tell what the table setup is like. It looks like a shuttle system of some sort. I was expecting to machine my own fixtures to hold my boards since none of them are square. Fortunately, my previous career was a mechanical engineering and machining so I can make anything that a 5 axis CNC can make quickly. I also have a serious machine level - .0001"/foot which should be workable.

Pretty happy with this deal, there are a lot of feeders including some of the bigger ones for 24mm, 36mm, and 44mm. I don't see any of the reel arms so I may need to pick those up from PPM. Still, a rough estimate of the feeders is north of $25k I think.

Do you know of any online manuals? Not the PPM ones, but the originals? Glad you got the message, look forward to seeing what this can do for my business.

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Offline Corporate666

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #3 on: March 02, 2015, 06:29:11 am »
That is the one.....eBay super special and it's only a short drive for me to pick up.

Can't tell what the table setup is like. It looks like a shuttle system of some sort. I was expecting to machine my own fixtures to hold my boards since none of them are square. Fortunately, my previous career was a mechanical engineering and machining so I can make anything that a 5 axis CNC can make quickly. I also have a serious machine level - .0001"/foot which should be workable.

Pretty happy with this deal, there are a lot of feeders including some of the bigger ones for 24mm, 36mm, and 44mm. I don't see any of the reel arms so I may need to pick those up from PPM. Still, a rough estimate of the feeders is north of $25k I think.

Do you know of any online manuals? Not the PPM ones, but the originals? Glad you got the message, look forward to seeing what this can do for my business.

Are you getting your PCB's made individually, as opposed to panelized?  What is the PCB thickness you are using?

I always get my PCB's panelized with 0.3" rails on 2 sides, and two fiducial marks on each side of the panel.  What are your boards like in terms of parts?  Is it mostly larger stuff or are you doing any fine pitch (QFN, etc)?  If your boards aren't setup for pick-and-placing, you might find you will need to either make some compromises or if you have some high volume boards, it may make more sense to respin some of those boards. 

It seems like we have really similar setups - we do CNC machining as well as electronics here.. for my previous PnP, I machined carriers out of 0.125" 6061 aluminum.  I would cut a 0.062" pocket in the sheet to hold the PCB, and I would machine a 0.3" wide 0.062" slot on either side of the carrier.  This made it easy to hold in my conveyors.  If you have holes in the PCB you could use dowel pins to hold them instead of routing out shapes for them - but you will do much better if you have features the PnP can use for registration.  I believe you can use pads or holes for registration - the manuals tend to strongly advise against this, so it may not work well or isn't reliable - I dunno. 

Looking at the pics of your machine, if you don't want (or choose not to) relocate the conveyor, you could remove the waffle tray and machine two plates.  A base plate out of 0.25" mic plate with some reamed holes for locating pins, then a top fixture plate with reamed holes that will be removable and sit on top.  Then just machine that top plate with pockets for your PCB's.  Hell, you could even machine pockets next to the PCB pockets for chips necessary for the PCB if you like :)  Nice thing about the 4C top is that it's just an array of tapped holes all across the table, so anything can be moved.

Going forward with new PCB's - traditionally there are 2 fiducial marks on each side of the PCB panel that the PnP will read and use.  By measuring where those marks are vs. where it thinks they should be, it can correct for board position errors like X/Y offset, rotational skew and even elongation in X/Y axes.  This gets important the smaller your parts are.  You can also put local fiducials on tricky parts like QFN's or BGA's (you've probably seen fiducials on either corner of a fine chip).

http://www.mvdmoosdijk.nl/Electronics/Art/Fiducials/fiducial_panel.gif



I have a full set of manuals, I can copy them for you next time I go to Kinkos or something.  They would only be partially applicable though since we have different software.  The hardware part of the manuals would still apply as your machine uses the same motor drivers as mine, but your main software is different. 


Do you still have your CNC machines in the shop?  And still have a 5-axis machine?  Maybe you can help me out with something? :)  I have a part I am working on that is a dodecahedron (12 sided polygon, each side is a pentagon).  I need to machine it out of 6061, and each face has a few tapped holes and a deep drilled hole.  We're in the process of changing some machinery here so I no longer have a 5-axis machine.  I was going to try to maching it on my 3-axis VMC with a tilting rotary indexer, but if you have a 5-axis machine.... maybe you could help? :)
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Offline rx8pilotTopic starter

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #4 on: March 02, 2015, 07:38:45 am »

Are you getting your PCB's made individually, as opposed to panelized?  What is the PCB thickness you are using?

At the moment all PCB's are individually routed because they mainly manually placed. Over the past few months, the designs have really stabilized so I feel more comfortable with bigger runs. This PnP purchase was definitely an impulse buy because it seemed like a good deal. Now that I have a production level machine, penalization will be important. I still need to do prototypes with odd shapes, so something needs to be created for those.


Going forward with new PCB's - traditionally there are 2 fiducial marks on each side of the PCB panel that the PnP will read and use.  By measuring where those marks are vs. where it thinks they should be, it can correct for board position errors like X/Y offset, rotational skew and even elongation in X/Y axes.  This gets important the smaller your parts are.  You can also put local fiducials on tricky parts like QFN's or BGA's (you've probably seen fiducials on either corner of a fine chip).

Yes there are QFN's at .5mm and hopefully BGA in the future. Do you think I should use local fiducials for those parts?

I have a full set of manuals, I can copy them for you next time I go to Kinkos or something.  They would only be partially applicable though since we have different software.  The hardware part of the manuals would still apply as your machine uses the same motor drivers as mine, but your main software is different. 

Thank you, I should be patient. It looks like there are some manuals included that may be enough to get me started.

Do you still have your CNC machines in the shop?  And still have a 5-axis machine?  Maybe you can help me out with something? :) 

For just a little longer. The CNC's are going away soon. I should still be able to help with a one-off. The 5-axis makes weird parts easy - totally changed the way I design once the 5 axis capability arrived.

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Offline Corporate666

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #5 on: March 02, 2015, 08:51:12 pm »
Yes, you should absolutely try to do local fiducials for BGA, certainly... for QFN, you are probably OK without them, but it won't hurt.

I would guesstimate that my place accuracy is reliably about < 0.010", and that is just with panel fiducials and nothing on each individual PCB or on any chips.  That should be fine for even 0.5mm fine pitch (0.5mm being 0.020"), but using the upward camera and local fiducials will get you down to 0.005" or likely less.  Make sure you have the right nozzles as well.  If you have an NC lathe, you can make them pretty easily - some of them have rubber attachments around the chip which help seal the vacuum in and prevent heavier parts from dropping.

On the feeders - I have found them to be generally reliable.  There are occasionally one or two that will error-out but the machine will retry multiple times and then beep at you if it can't pick the part, so it's not like you will get a board with bad placements or missing parts - it just means you will need to go to the machine and fix whatever is wrong.  I've had very mixed luck in fixing feeders.  Sometimes the problems are obvious - especially fluff/debris from paper tapes accumulating in the gear mechanisms.  In such cases, compressed air and oil helps a lot.  But in other cases, the feeder works fine 90% of the time and 10% of the time doesn't.  Getting them just right is sort of like getting a mountain bike adjusted just right... it's a bit of an art to get it perfect.  PPM (and I am sure others) offer a refurb service - I'll probably send my few problem feeders in for repair/replacement at some point.

If you are ever buying more feeders, get 12V feeders.  The 12V indexes much faster... 5V much slower.  The machine can actually arrive back at the feeder to pick the next part, and a 5V feeder might not have indexed fully yet, slowing things up (only relevant when you are picking multiple parts in succession from the same feeder).

If you do end up needing manuals, let me know and I will copy 'em.

On the 5-axis part... I had an idea of how to make the part from a few separate pieces, so I'll give that a shot first - and if not, I might come begging for help ;)
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Offline marshallh

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #6 on: March 04, 2015, 07:33:58 am »
1.0mm BGA is very forgiving of part placement. The chip floats on the surface tension of molten solder, they "pop" into place much more than any other package. Compare to 0.4,0.5mm QFP/QFN which is killer.
My fab said they don't need fiducials for BGAs (they just use the ball lands themselves), and fiducials for other parts are nice but not required (of course, completely different equipment..)
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Offline rx8pilotTopic starter

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #7 on: March 04, 2015, 08:26:11 am »
1.0mm BGA is very forgiving of part placement. The chip floats on the surface tension of molten solder, they "pop" into place much more than any other package. Compare to 0.4,0.5mm QFP/QFN which is killer.
My fab said they don't need fiducials for BGAs (they just use the ball lands themselves), and fiducials for other parts are nice but not required (of course, completely different equipment..)

Yes, the .4mm QFN's I am using now are not forgiving at all. I am REALLY looking forward to being able to use BGA's and small passives to improve density and performance of my designs. I think I will need special feeders if I go to 0201 so I may stick with 0402 passives.

Picking up the system on Thursday AM, fingers crossed that it is all there and makes the journey safely.
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Offline Kjelt

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #8 on: March 04, 2015, 10:49:27 am »
Great topic I think many enthousiasts here, as I am, are excited to see how this will develop.
I always wonder what kind of products you make/sell that you can upgrade to your own productionline.
And I am also interested to see the rest of your line like the stencil paste machine, flying probe tester and reflow oven ?
 

Offline rx8pilotTopic starter

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #9 on: March 04, 2015, 06:41:22 pm »
I hope so, the overall cost of the Quad IVC with feeders was less than a TM240A which is FAR less capable. For an enthusiast its a chunk of change, but not out of the ball park. For me, this is a transition from high-end hobby to a true business. I have been making money from electronic design for a while, but it has all been very basic and hand assembled designs. My main income has been mechanical design and manufacturing, now it will include electronics as well. My entire PnP 'line' is well under $10k and in theory can make more boards in a day than I could hand assemble in a month with better consistency.

I purchased a second hand JEM-310 convection batch oven about 2 years ago and it has been great for what I do. Far better than a DIY toaster oven, but it was about $3k or so. It can manage lead free solder and can do one panelized PCB at a time. The stencil printer started out as a Manncorp 2100, but I added my own machined PCB holders to make it work for fine pitch. The way is comes from Manncorp is useless for almost anything at all. This PnP 'line' is about as basic as it can get and about as cheap as it can get and still be considered professional. I only need to make a few hundred PCB's per month right now so it will be a leisurely pace for this setup. I really wanted the control and oversight of the builds to avoid mistakes and correct any issues on the fly. This will also give me a crash course education on DFM - Design for Manufacture.
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Offline rx8pilotTopic starter

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #10 on: March 06, 2015, 02:12:10 am »
Ok, here we go. Today I went to pick up the machine. I learned from PPM (Precision Placement Machines) that it is now called a Quad 4000C since they upgraded it to windows from its original DOS configuration. I have not done a proper inventory of the feeders, but there are 55 total which is a great start for a PnP. 8mm, 12mm, 16mm, 24mm, waffle trays, and a 5 lane tube feeder.

It needs a serious cleaning for sure, probably about a full day or more of just cleaning it up which will give me a chance to learn what is what. I did boot it up but there was some issue with the software license and it would not really do anything. I spoke with the people at PPM (goppm.com) and they were very generous, spending about an hour on the phone helping me inspect the machine reasonably well. It will probably take a few days to actually get it running with all the cleaning and installation tasks. It also has a PCB conveyor but I don't think I will use it. I need to design and build a general purpose PCB holder.

It is heavy! Guessing about 1300 pounds or so but I guess that weight is needed for stability when it is full speed. By production standards, this machine is slow. I would estimate that it can do about a month or more of continuous hand-placed PCB's in a single day.

Couple of pics. It is currently sitting in my back yard while I make room in the garage.

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Offline Corporate666

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #11 on: March 06, 2015, 06:25:27 pm »
Assuming your first picture is from the pick-up location, it appears he has another Quad 4C behind yours, in pieces.

Does this place strip/part/resell PnP machines?  Could use some parts ;)
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Offline ajb

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #12 on: March 06, 2015, 10:44:52 pm »
How is the control hardware arranged for these things?  Is it standard PC hardware, or something custom?
 

Offline rx8pilotTopic starter

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #13 on: March 06, 2015, 11:01:10 pm »
The originals were DOS based PC hardware with custom interfaces and motor drivers. The one I got was converted to Windows which makes it better and worse all at the same time. Easier than DOS but more things to go wrong I think. Regrettably, I cannot mess with it until early net week. Should be fun to just look around and learn how it is put together. I need PCB's pretty quick so I am highly motivated to get going soon.

Assuming your first picture is from the pick-up location, it appears he has another Quad 4C behind yours, in pieces.

Does this place strip/part/resell PnP machines?  Could use some parts ;)
They had two Quads one was a DOS unit with only a handful of feeders and mine was the Windows with 55 feeders. Both are operable. I think the thing in the BKG was some sort of medical machine. The pickup location was an commercial and medical electronics gold mine. I wish I could tear that stuff apart. They throw away TONs of stuff, amazing.
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Offline Kjelt

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #14 on: March 07, 2015, 08:58:18 am »
Regrettably, I cannot mess with it until early net week. Should be fun to just look around and learn how it is put together. I need PCB's pretty quick so I am highly motivated to get going soon.
Is that wise to use on very short time period a machine for finished products where you did not have enough time to figure it all out or assess the end quality?  :-//
It could take you a lot more time than anticipated, do you have a fallback scenario in place?
 

Offline rx8pilotTopic starter

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #15 on: March 07, 2015, 06:00:10 pm »
It could take you a lot more time than anticipated, do you have a fallback scenario in place?

Definitely, I have no idea what to expect. I only have hopes and will continue to keep backup plans in place until I get this machine verified.

Assuming your first picture is from the pick-up location, it appears he has another Quad 4C behind yours, in pieces.

I looked at the picture again, yes its another 4c. That one is all together and functional, checked out by a guy who runs them. DOS version. I wish there was a parts place in Los Angeles, but this place just happened upon them and really had no idea what they do.

Now that I have seen these things up close, I am VERY happy that I did not get into a TM240A or similar. With some patience, I got this machine that is vastly more capable for the same cost and what looks to be about a week of TLC to get it back to operational condition. Could be longer, but even if I spend a few $k, it will still be worth it IMHO.
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Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #16 on: March 07, 2015, 06:34:37 pm »
Regrettably, I cannot mess with it until early net week. Should be fun to just look around and learn how it is put together. I need PCB's pretty quick so I am highly motivated to get going soon.
Is that wise to use on very short time period a machine for finished products where you did not have enough time to figure it all out or assess the end quality?  :-//
It could take you a lot more time than anticipated, do you have a fallback scenario in place?
Having a definite goal is a good way to focus the mind on solving a problem...
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Offline Corporate666

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #17 on: March 07, 2015, 11:12:47 pm »
Now that I have seen these things up close, I am VERY happy that I did not get into a TM240A or similar. With some patience, I got this machine that is vastly more capable for the same cost and what looks to be about a week of TLC to get it back to operational condition. Could be longer, but even if I spend a few $k, it will still be worth it IMHO.

Yep, "told ya so" :))))

No offense to any other manufacturer or EEVBlogger or machine, but there is a WORLD of difference between a "real" PnP and anything else.  Wait until you get yours up and running... as a CNC/machinist guy like me, you will develop an appreciation for how it's all of the little things that make your machine so fit for purpose, and so difficult to replicate on a hobby scale.  Things like vision, on-the-fly centering, the feeders, motor control, SPEED and other things are simply difficult to achieve and are the hard parts of PnP.  X/Y/Z motion is easy and cheap.  Doing it at fast speeds, accurately and repeatably (within a few 0.001) is very hard and very expensive.

Once you get that machine up and running and see what it can do for the $5-6k you are into it for, you will appreciate why there is just no point in buying something like the TM240.  It's so crippled as to be effectively useless compared to a real machine.

I'm excited to see the post when you finally get her up and running!
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Offline Kjelt

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #18 on: March 08, 2015, 09:38:19 am »
Only real thing missing is the source code. In the future when some unsupported package comes along you might get stuck. That would be the greatest benefit from an open source open HW initiative, the community would keep it alive.
 

Offline miguelvp

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #19 on: March 08, 2015, 09:46:42 am »
Only real thing missing is the source code. In the future when some unsupported package comes along you might get stuck. That would be the greatest benefit from an open source open HW initiative, the community would keep it alive.

And by community you mean a handful of developers or do you mean the rest that just enjoy the spoils and complain why things don't move faster?
 
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Offline rx8pilotTopic starter

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #20 on: March 08, 2015, 04:41:08 pm »
Only real thing missing is the source code. In the future when some unsupported package comes along you might get stuck. That would be the greatest benefit from an open source open HW initiative, the community would keep it alive.

The new software runs on Windows 7 so it will probably outlast the hardware. PPM is continuing to develop for the Quads so getting stuck seems rather unlikely. MANY people are still running the DOS versions without issue. Even my go to assembly house in southern California uses about 10 of them currently.

Keep in mind that my personal goal is to transition away from DIY processes and move into a true professional world. This is currently how I make a living so I have to be very careful about relying on community supported projects that have unpredictable results and timeframes.


And by community you mean a handful of developers or do you mean the rest that just enjoy the spoils and complain why things don't move faster?


So funny, so true.
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Offline Kjelt

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #21 on: March 08, 2015, 05:48:30 pm »
Keep in mind that my personal goal is to transition away from DIY processes and move into a true professional world. This is currently how I make a living so I have to be very careful about relying on community supported projects that have unpredictable results and timeframes. 
Yes I understand that and the only reason you have support now is PPM. So that is probably why the Quads are still sold to companies.
A lot of unsupported (manufacturing company bankrupt or no support) P&P machines go very cheap because of that a normal company can not afford to buy it and run into unsupported problems.
Those end up with the wellwilling hobbieists.
A bigger company that has to make a living out of this will probably buy a brand new P&P machine with full support and write it off in 5 years or so.
Good thing for you there is still support for this machine  :-+
 

Offline rx8pilotTopic starter

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #22 on: March 08, 2015, 09:03:39 pm »
The only reason I am interested in the Quad is because of PPM and a few others. I think it will last a lot longer than 5 years because of that. My previous partner got a 'free' Panasonic PnP that was no longer supported so it was too expensive even though it was free with about 100 various feeders. In this case, I got a currently supported PnP with a solid feeder inventory for $5k. It was a delicately calculated move that did not happen overnight.

The Quads are very unique used machines because they have support. PPM is still selling fresh refurbs for $28k plus feeders. A full kit would be around $50k. For that money your options are very limited for a vision capable machine. Manncorp FVX maybe?

As a hobbiest, I am not sure if an old commercial machine would be much more than a project that needs a big air compressor, 3 phase power, and a TON of effort. I got very good at manual assembly and would probably never mess with PnP if I did not need the precision and volume.
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Offline rx8pilotTopic starter

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #23 on: March 10, 2015, 03:53:27 am »
DAY 1:

Synopsis: Oh Shit.

I was out of town immediately after picking the machine up and today was the first day to take a close look. My goal was to get an understanding of the architecture of the machine since I could not even tell the front from the back. I also needed to get the thing in its final spot and get it off the pallet that it shipped on. Since it weighs well over a 1,000 pounds, it takes some thinking and patience to do it alone like I did. When I go to the machine shop tomorrow I will pick up the super level and get the table nice and flat.

The PC boots up but the application is stuck because of a licence problem - the previous owner did not pay. I have not yet seen anything move. PPM spent considerable amount of time on the phone today talking me through things and have not charged anything yet. I learned that if you try to game the license system it will brick the interface and you have to replace the PIC micro on the interface PCB. The are overnighting a new PIC for delivery tomorrow and giving me a temporary license to get the machine running. Cant wait to see that happen.

Right off the bat, I had to get dirty. The feet and the threads on the machine for leveling were damaged when it was removed from service. I had to insert Helicoils on the bottom of the machine for the new stainless leveler feet. I also removed the rack mount PC becuase the previous owner never mounted it properly and it was barely hanging on for dear life.



There was a serious layer of dirt. After speaking with PPM I learned that the machine had not been used since 2012. The owner did not pay for the perpetual license and machine will do nothing. A few years of dirt and MANY thousands of loose parts all over the machine. Passives of all types, SOIC, crystals littered the machine everywhere I looked. The operators REALLY did not give half a shit about this thing or the work they were doing. About 2 hours of cleaning and inspecting got it back to where it should be for production.

One pass with my hand.....


There were empty tubes, and about ten plastic cups filled with mis-picks. Many fell into every open crack available.


The enemy of neglect.....


The feeders all need service. Mainly the idler wheels that have disintegrated on may of them. I learned that these are the 12v 8pin models and apparently that is good news. 32 8mm, 16 12mm, 5 16mm, 5 24mm, 5 lane tube feeder, and two large matrix trays.
I hope that I can replace the idler myself. All the other functions seem to be good.


This does not look good....the wheels are falling apart.


The entire table is just a large and very heavy piece of steel with threaded holes. Anything and everything can be moved anywhere....its really cool. Very flexible.


The ball screws are very fast helix. It looks like the wrong grease was used but I should be able to get that worked out fairly easy. A fast ball screw requires a very fine encoder to get good position accuracy.


Linear encoders on this beast. These measure the actual position of the head as opposed to counting pulses of the motor encoder. Generally much more accurate and repeatable.


That is it for now. Hopefully I can get the machine to move around tomorrow when the PIC micro is installed. The feeders will take a while to get into production condition, but I can experiment and practice programming without the feeders.
This is awesome.
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Offline ataradov

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Re: Finally have a pick and place on the way Quad IVC
« Reply #24 on: March 10, 2015, 04:39:56 am »
So you buy a machine and it does nothing unless you pay more money? What's up with that?
Alex
 


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