Author Topic: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!  (Read 107782 times)

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Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #25 on: July 30, 2014, 01:27:03 pm »
I just can't see them getting the required accuracy, especially with 3d printed parts for mechanics.
Although you can do a lot with vision/calibration to correct for mechanical errors, the one thing you can't do is vision the position the part needs to be placed at, as it is covered in solder paste.
I doubt it would be useable for anything below 0805. it is going to get exponentially harder to get sufficient accuracy as precision gets tighter.
The only way something using corrections to cheap mechanics like this can work is if a way can be found to measure the head position precisely, sum of all errors well under 0.1mm in all conditions. It maybe that someone can solve this (e.g. laser interferometer) but this doesn't look like it.


They had an interview with one of these guys on Slashdot - he totally dismissed the issue of setup, which is always going to take a lot of the time for any kind of P&P, from $100 to $1,000,000
However one encouraging thing was they were keen to work on it until they had something useable instead of rushing into a half-arsed kickstarter.

I don't deny it would be a cool hack if they can get it working well, but even if they do, it will never be anywhere near as useful a tool as they and others seem to think.
Automatic pick/place will never ever be useful for 1-off boards unless  there are many hundreds of a few types of component.



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Offline Precipice

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #26 on: July 30, 2014, 01:33:05 pm »
Building machines is its own joyous reward, and I wish them well.

Caveat: I have PnP machines that are probably as good as these guys will manage if all goes well. It's still quicker and easier to hand place components for low volume builds. (Well, I say hand build - not tweezers, more like this
http://amesberger.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/dsc_0668.jpg - you can place about 30 components a minute when rocking along with 0603s. Automating one of those with X-Y encoders and direction LEDs to guide in to the location on the board is something I keep thinking about - but then it's more setup than just printing out a build sheet and propping it up to work from.)

As Dave says, the gap between hand building for prototypes, and subbing out (or being able to afford a real, if used, commercial machine) is quite small. So, with any luck, this is for the joy of building the machine, not because of an unmet need. If the machine can do something super-cool, like get BGA placement right, with enough cameras and calibration and cunning, that makes it more appealing. Depositing solder paste is also handy, and I can't see why a machine that can place parts can't paste - although getting the pump and needle right will be fun.

Also: Feeders. They're hard, and I've not seen evidence that people are doing it wrong, just that it's fundamentally hard. Perhaps vision is now so cheap and easy that we can chuck a bag of components at the machine, and let it sort them out. Pass all passives through an LCR station just to check values before placing, and off it goes. That would be cool.
 

Offline all_repair

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #27 on: July 30, 2014, 01:45:23 pm »
I am happy if it can help to do vision assisted probing.
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #28 on: July 30, 2014, 01:58:19 pm »
DIY PnP is also a formidable challenge but I'm glad there are people willing to have a go. Nothing is ever accomplished by saying it can't be done.

I agree, and I am not discouraging anybody from doing so.
The only "nay-saying" I'm doing is directed at those who think this will be some sort of revolution, and will be the best thing since sliced bread, it very likely won't be for most people.
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #29 on: July 30, 2014, 02:05:06 pm »
Also: Feeders. They're hard, and I've not seen evidence that people are doing it wrong, just that it's fundamentally hard. Perhaps vision is now so cheap and easy that we can chuck a bag of components at the machine, and let it sort them out. Pass all passives through an LCR station just to check values before placing, and off it goes. That would be cool.

It's probably not that hard in the scheme of things to use a vibration tray for each part and use vision to pick up parts once they are randomly flipped the right way. In which case you could just unreel passives into a bin and use vision to suck up parts, no need for the feeder any more. Caps are easier because they don't have to be flipped. Even resistors don't have to be flipped, but it's ugly otherwise.
 

Offline Precipice

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #30 on: July 30, 2014, 02:15:56 pm »
You've got the nightmare scenario of a component dropping off the needle into an adjacent tub - especially if you're sometimes picking up by a corner. Hence my wondering about LCR-testing on the fly, since finding that wrong valued part on an assembled board is a foul job that'll easily cost you more time than assembling the board from scratch.

Thinking about it - if people are as excited by this as they seem to be,  should someone have a go at kickstarting a decent manual PnP machine? Retail prices on those are absurd. Or is it more an 'ooh, Robots' thing?


 

Offline KJDS

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #31 on: July 30, 2014, 03:06:42 pm »
You've got the nightmare scenario of a component dropping off the needle into an adjacent tub - especially if you're sometimes picking up by a corner. Hence my wondering about LCR-testing on the fly, since finding that wrong valued part on an assembled board is a foul job that'll easily cost you more time than assembling the board from scratch.

Thinking about it - if people are as excited by this as they seem to be,  should someone have a go at kickstarting a decent manual PnP machine? Retail prices on those are absurd. Or is it more an 'ooh, Robots' thing?

I've seem machines test R and C, but only from the first one from each tape to make sure it's got the right tape in the right slot, otherwise it just slows things down too much.

Offline Precipice

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #32 on: July 30, 2014, 03:24:48 pm »
Bah, my good LCR tester can do 180,000 components per hour. Well, it says it can - I suspect I'd need to build it some elaborate part handling gear to get near that!
Anyway, LCR testing needn't slow things down much if you're building a tweezer based pnp machine. Lowering the part onto a rig each time for a vacuum machine might be tedious (although if you're already committed to holding each part over a camera, maybe not so much extra time)
Anyway, it's a daft idea.
 

Offline free_electron

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #33 on: July 30, 2014, 03:36:52 pm »
Are you people kidding me!?!?
This is a brilliant idea. PnP, 3D printer, add a router tool and enclose it in an oven.

You can then mill a PCB, mount the components, reflow them and then print an enclosure around them

I smell a kickstarter campaign "Totally Freakin Awesome"  :-DD
Add one ore thing : a wastebasket so it can drop whatever it produces straight in the trash can.
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Offline EEVblog

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #34 on: July 30, 2014, 03:46:44 pm »
Thinking about it - if people are as excited by this as they seem to be,  should someone have a go at kickstarting a decent manual PnP machine? Retail prices on those are absurd. Or is it more an 'ooh, Robots' thing?

Bingo!
Yes, a well designed manual system would probably be quite popular, once word gets around that DIY PnP's generally suck, and a well designed manual system can work very well.
 

Offline free_electron

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #35 on: July 30, 2014, 03:52:05 pm »
In this case its exactly what has happened, firepick is a fork and extension of open pnp which has been around for a few years. The firepick fork mainly has added better visioning utilizing open CV.
Give it another couple of years and a few forks and I think the s/w will be in usable shape..
I wish the entire open community stopped forking around and, for once, finished something before they moved to the next thing. All they produce is forks... Nothing ever gets finished in a workable state. So people who want to use this stuff are basically forked ...

For forks sake ..
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Offline fcb

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #36 on: July 30, 2014, 10:04:03 pm »
I've been playing with various low cost P&P machines seriously since 2007.

I don't think it is impossible to do it for $1000, except that the limitations imposed by making it profitably for $1000 endow the unit with limited niche appeal, which reduces the chances of making money which in-turn makes it unlikely to be born.

I think it's possible to do an accurate (i.e. cameras) machine with 32-48 feeders profitably for $3000 - but probably only if it was KS'd, or hit at least 50 orders.

Using a delta might work, but not the path I chose (I did consider it though) - be interesting to see how this one develops. The biggest issue I can see is that drag feeders (the only economical way to do this) require a surprising amount of force, and they *may* have to stiffen the delta up or re-calibrate it after each pick.
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Online Mechatrommer

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #37 on: July 31, 2014, 12:59:30 am »
I just can't see them getting the required accuracy, especially with 3d printed parts for mechanics.
through experience, it can be compensated in model drawing, or doing post processing. i think thats how technicians and engineers deal with limitation in the field (aka hacking). but agreed, if the specification is not fullfilling your requirement or too must hassle to deal for, the device is not for you. sure there are better options (with additional price of course). but for some, cheap 3d printer is alot better than gluing several cardboard blocks together. i think similar argument can be applied to pnp, if it can save time by say >20% then its not entirely useless.
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Offline pickle9000

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #38 on: July 31, 2014, 01:21:45 am »

 

Offline pickle9000

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #39 on: July 31, 2014, 01:47:17 am »
Here is a link to the build for the above. Really impressive setup, and looks like he uses it as well.

http://www.briandorey.com/post/Diy-Manual-Pick-and-Place-Machine-part-1.aspx
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #40 on: July 31, 2014, 03:17:11 am »
Here is a link to the build for the above. Really impressive setup, and looks like he uses it as well.
http://www.briandorey.com/post/Diy-Manual-Pick-and-Place-Machine-part-1.aspx

Very nice!
 

Offline pickle9000

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #41 on: July 31, 2014, 03:49:17 am »
The finished machine, can rotate parts, no programming required. Slick as snot, really.

 

Offline miguelvp

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #42 on: July 31, 2014, 04:14:45 am »
The finished machine, can rotate parts, no programming required. Slick as snot, really.

Don't know about that, this one he made later on, looks more finished, specially after making it way faster :)



Edit: since when the YT embedded has to use http? used to be it was https only now it's http only!  :-//
« Last Edit: July 31, 2014, 04:16:33 am by miguelvp »
 

Offline pickle9000

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #43 on: July 31, 2014, 04:19:25 am »
That's a different project (not the manual pick and place in my previous post), very nice as well.
 

Offline Neil Jansen

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #44 on: July 31, 2014, 04:38:58 am »
Hi, I'm the lead developer of FirePick Delta, I saw this post in my referrer logs and figured I'd chime in.

Wow, there's a lot of misinformation about what we are and aren't try to do.  I'll try to explain our intentions here for anyone that cares.  I'm not as worried about the snarky comments, I expect those here and on other sites like slashdot, they don't bother me at all.

Destined for failure right there. Jack of all trades, master of none.
This is a bit tricky for me to approach.  We're entered in the Hackaday Contest, and currently doing quite well, yet you (Dave Jones) are an official judge of that contest.   I didn't see anything in the rules about chitchatting between judges and contestants, so I don' think there's any Schrödinger's cat paradoxes to worry about.  However, I really don't want to start a debate or anything here, because that's not good for anybody. I'll try to keep this post as matter-of-fact as I can.  I really don't want to get an attitude with a judge, or suck up to him/her :)  Hope we can all be adults here.

We added 3D printing to our machine for two reasons.  #1, we're using existing RepRap motion control (Marlin and RAMPS) as a basis of our design.  Therefore, we get the 3D printing for free.  We're not doing all sorts of development in 3D printing.  That work was pioneered by the RepRap dev team years ago.  We just mount a 3d print head on the machine and run existing software.  #2, we intend for the component feeders and other pieces to be 3D printed from conductive plastic (from a company called 3DXtech, that uses carbon nanotubes impregnated into the ABS).  This makes our feeders and other bits ESD-safe, which I think is REALLY cool.  I know this isn't everyone's cup of tea, and I respect that, but it's worked extremely well for us so far.   I personally don't agree with your comments Dave, but I'm a bit biased ;)

Here's a quick list of what our machine does and doesn't do, since it's not clearly defined anywhere else:
3D printing: YES
SMT placement: YES, with closed-loop computer vision.
Paste dispense: YES, with closed-loop computer vison.
PCB milling, drilling: Not currently, if ever.  It's open source, so if someone else gets it working, that's cool, they can send me a pull request.
Component tape feeders: YES, in all standard sizes.  We support 24x drag-pin feed and 2x full-auto feeders at the moment.  We've got 8mm, 12mm, 16mm, 24mm, 32mm, 44mm. 
Component tube feeders: Will support them in the near future.  3D printed receptacle, so if you've got a weird SMT inductor, you can modify an existing feeder for your part, and optionally send us a pull request
Tray feeders: Yes, although not the big JEDEC sizes.

If you want to place parts yourself, or buy a big machine, that's fine.  This machine fills a niche however.  I know this, because my inbox is filled with hundreds of emails wanting me to sell them a machine.  Overall, the responses that I've gotten for this machine are 98% positive, at least.  That's good enough for me.  If a few people think it's stupid, I'm cool with that.

I wish the entire open community stopped forking around and, for once, finished something before they moved to the next thing. All they produce is forks... Nothing ever gets finished in a workable state. So people who want to use this stuff are basically forked ...

For forks sake ..
Again, lots of misinformation here.  Yes we forked OpenPnP, but we use Git, and can send pull requests back to Jason Von Nieda, who runs OpenPnP.  What is the problem here?  That's how software gets done these days.  I have good communication with Jason, we're not doing a "hard fork", we've not come to philosophical differences on OpenPnP.  We'll run it headless with a node.js webserver, instead of a java gui app, but that doesn't require much code to change.  Jason's a busy guy, and it doesn't work 100% at this point as it's still in alpha; what are our other options?  We could bitch about it, or we could do like we're doing, and get to work. Which we are.

Anyway, I could keep going, but not sure it'll really do much.  This machine will work great for many.  Some won't like it.  Some may like it once I'm able to better communicate to them what it is (the whole PnP this is so nebulous, it means so many different things, to so many different people).  We've got some REALLY clever ways of dealing with the problems that you guys mentioned, so PLEASE, just wait until we get something working and documented before you pass judgement.  We're in this for the long-haul.  This is what I'm personally doing with my life.  PnP or die.

Cheers!

Neil Jansen
 

Offline sleemanj

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #45 on: July 31, 2014, 04:44:35 am »
The finished machine, can rotate parts, no programming required. Slick as snot, really.

Crazily well engineered for a manual P&P, gilding the lilly doesn't even come close!

Watching it in use, the thing that strikes me, is how much time is taken "seeking" back and forth to the tapes (this is true also of an auto of course, but they have an easier job of going to a precise location and back again quickly)

Makes me wonder if there could be some way to "take the parts with you" instead of back and forth all the time.
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Offline EEVblog

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #46 on: July 31, 2014, 05:58:56 am »
Hi, I'm the lead developer of FirePick Delta, I saw this post in my referrer logs and figured I'd chime in.

Thanks for joining.

Quote
This is a bit tricky for me to approach.  We're entered in the Hackaday Contest, and currently doing quite well, yet you (Dave Jones) are an official judge of that contest.   I didn't see anything in the rules about chitchatting between judges and contestants, so I don' think there's any Schrödinger's cat paradoxes to worry about.  However, I really don't want to start a debate or anything here, because that's not good for anybody.

I disagree, debates are good!

Quote
Hope we can all be adults here.

Of course.
Just to clarify, what I meant by "Destined for failure" does not mean I think the project will actually fail, nor do I want it to fail. Just in my my experience when a project tried to do too many thing it always leads to compromises, or takes away form the core focus, or sucks development time on an non-core feature etc
It's something we talk about a lot on the Amp Hour.

Quote
I personally don't agree with your comments Dave, but I'm a bit biased ;)

That's ok.
IMO the 3D printing thing shouldn't have been mentioned at all. It's all about focus, and having that in the back of your mind may subtly restrict your engineering options, as much as you think you "get t for free". That may be the case, but it may not.

Quote
If you want to place parts yourself, or buy a big machine, that's fine.  This machine fills a niche however.  I know this, because my inbox is filled with hundreds of emails wanting me to sell them a machine.  Overall, the responses that I've gotten for this machine are 98% positive, at least.  That's good enough for me.  If a few people think it's stupid, I'm cool with that.

I have no doubt you'll sell machines, but that is separate issue about how viable small cheap DIY PnP machines are actually are when you look at them unbiasedly. Just because people buy them and use them doesn't actually make them viable. Some people just like to work inefficiently and charge zero for their time.

So once again, I'm not against them, I think they are cool, heck, I want one, but I maintain my view that there is a very narrow window of real value useability on these things.

Quote
We've got some REALLY clever ways of dealing with the problems that you guys mentioned, so PLEASE, just wait until we get something working and documented before you pass judgement.  We're in this for the long-haul.  This is what I'm personally doing with my life.  PnP or die.

Awesome, more power to you. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

BTW, as regards to the contest entry, I was surprised to see it entered, because it's not really a "connected" device?  :-//
Perhaps I'm missing something?
« Last Edit: July 31, 2014, 06:00:41 am by EEVblog »
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #47 on: July 31, 2014, 06:03:27 am »
Crazily well engineered for a manual P&P, gilding the lilly doesn't even come close!

I thin kthat's what required to be genuinely efficient for long term use though, it's the small things that count.

Quote
Watching it in use, the thing that strikes me, is how much time is taken "seeking" back and forth to the tapes (this is true also of an auto of course, but they have an easier job of going to a precise location and back again quickly)
Makes me wonder if there could be some way to "take the parts with you" instead of back and forth all the time.

I had the exact same though. My mind instantly wondered to designs for ways to feed tape directly in the head and then pop parts out like a Pez dispenser.
Either by transferring existing tape parts into some sort of loader, or dreaming about the manufacturers providing parts in such a way.
 

Offline pickle9000

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #48 on: July 31, 2014, 06:11:18 am »
The finished machine, can rotate parts, no programming required. Slick as snot, really.

Crazily well engineered for a manual P&P, gilding the lilly doesn't even come close!

Watching it in use, the thing that strikes me, is how much time is taken "seeking" back and forth to the tapes (this is true also of an auto of course, but they have an easier job of going to a precise location and back again quickly)

Makes me wonder if there could be some way to "take the parts with you" instead of back and forth all the time.

Leveling up the dispensing table and and the pcb table would help. Not to mention more rigid holding of the tape so it would not have to be advanced one at a time. I think the entire reek holder could be a removable assy to make it easier to set up. A camera on the pickup tool would be nice.

 

Offline Precipice

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Re: O-M-G cheap pick and place machines coming!
« Reply #49 on: July 31, 2014, 09:10:25 am »
I've got a camera on my manual machine and it's (almost) great. It's just a PAL board with the lens swapped, and an ebay LCD TV - I think the resolution of the TV is the limiting factor, if anyone's planning to do similar. Problem was, I wanted a small TV so I could position it where I didn't have to move my head much to see it - to get a decent speed (which the chap running that demo didn't seem to be achieving), everything needs to be streamlined.

I've just come off a project using HD cameras over a serial link, though, and I'm very tempted to upgrade my camera to full HD. Trying to stop myself mounting 2 cameras, and combining the outputs into a single 3D panel, to stop me having to sort of squint on tricky parts :)
(anyone know of a small (7"?) LCD panel that's fast enough to do shutter glasses 3D? I'd be driving it from an FPGA, so pretty much any drive scheme is fair game. I thought about 3DS panels off ebay, but I'm just not sure they won't be a monumental pain in the arse...)

 


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