rx8pilot: I agree with your "long tailed" approach. I've already upgraded from "build my own pick and place" to "buy one". And indeed if the next nearest competitor was 2x the price and had nicer software I probably would have found the money somewhere to get it. But the "real" machines cost at least an order of magnitude more money than I can afford... at which point it's no longer practical to have in the shop.
Every time I use the hardware on the Neoden 4 I'm impressed. But the software feels so close to being okay, but not quite. If a few other users wanted to go together for better software, I would gladly get a developer, write a spec and make it. After writing most of a complete PNP control software recently, I can tell you that it's not an overwhelming undertaking but does require some concentrated effort to get right. Let me know if anyone has serious interest in this kind of thing... perhaps Neoden will release something that puts the icing on the cake but honestly I'm not holding my breath.
As for the real cost of cheap solutions... sadly most of us don't have the option of buying the Rolls Royce right out of the gate, so the fiddling with a cheap machine is really an "investment" in hopefully earning enough to get something better.... or at least that's how I see it.
I did not have the money to buy a fancy machine either. I was stuck with a very challenging decision - buy new/lowend or used/higher end. The decision was to go for the used machine which I expected would be a bear to get running and I was not disappointed. I spent around $5k on a broken machine, $4k on parts, and about a month fixing and learning how to use it. I traded nights and weekends to make up for my lack of money. So, clearly the upfront cost was higher (cash + time) but it is quite solid and far more capable than an N4 no matter how you look at it. It was a compromise that had a good result. There were some very scary moments where it could have ended poorly, so there was definitely some real risk that the project would fail. Now that it is up and running, the effort need to keep it there is tiny. It is fast and reliable. It can hold tons of parts up to 56mm tapes. I have over 100 parts setup in the machine at any given moment so it saves a LOT of time changing from program to program - almost no part changes needed. Tall parts, wide parts, small parts - 1005 passives if needed, cut tapes, tubes, 6 nozzle changer, side scan on the fly, etc. All time savers.
As for new machines, your are right, there is nothing out there in this range. Most machines (including mine) you would blast $10k on a small number of feeders. It is a tough transition for a business.
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