Thanks! That makes sense, I was thinking the same. What are your thoughts of used genuine Yamaha vs new China clones? I've heard the China clones have issues with the slider that prevents the parts from jumping out, and we do a lot of LED boards.I only have Yamaha/Philips feeders. When I started with LEDs, I found that my nozzles did not handle domed LEDs well at all. So, I got flat-top LEDs, and those worked fine.
I can't do 0603 LEDs, as the flat top is just too small, much smaller than the flat top of an 0603 passive component. But, 0805 LEDs work fine.
Jon
I'm not in teh factory this week, but i'll go and look and see how I do it. I normally have 3 reels of 100nF/0603' 25V caps on my machines doing the same exact thing since we seem to use those in wheelborrow loads. Its was'nt immeidately obvious, but my notes are scribbled in a folder.. ( yes, shoudl be in the wiki i know. )
Ahh, yeah. My LEDs are all flat and seem to place fine.
Another option for the multi pick of the LEDs is for me to make the four different parts, name them LED-1, LED-2, etc. Them make 25% of the placed LEDs use the LED-1, 25% use LED-2, etc.
Then let the optimizer happen with those. It'll work, but obviously since I'm choosing which 25% are grouped together, it won't be as fast as if the machine had full flexibility over all LEDs, but I assume it'll still be way faster
Thanks! That makes sense, I was thinking the same. What are your thoughts of used genuine Yamaha vs new China clones? I've heard the China clones have issues with the slider that prevents the parts from jumping out, and we do a lot of LED boards.I only have Yamaha/Philips feeders. When I started with LEDs, I found that my nozzles did not handle domed LEDs well at all. So, I got flat-top LEDs, and those worked fine.
I can't do 0603 LEDs, as the flat top is just too small, much smaller than the flat top of an 0603 passive component. But, 0805 LEDs work fine.
Jon
I'm not in teh factory this week, but i'll go and look and see how I do it. I normally have 3 reels of 100nF/0603' 25V caps on my machines doing the same exact thing since we seem to use those in wheelborrow loads. Its was'nt immeidately obvious, but my notes are scribbled in a folder.. ( yes, shoudl be in the wiki i know. )
Ahh, yeah. My LEDs are all flat and seem to place fine.
Another option for the multi pick of the LEDs is for me to make the four different parts, name them LED-1, LED-2, etc. Them make 25% of the placed LEDs use the LED-1, 25% use LED-2, etc.
Then let the optimizer happen with those. It'll work, but obviously since I'm choosing which 25% are grouped together, it won't be as fast as if the machine had full flexibility over all LEDs, but I assume it'll still be way faster
but the bigger issue is once again that the pick and place continued to place parts even after it couldn't find the fiducials. So I tested again with blue painters tape, and low and behold, it will ignore not finding them, and continue to place parts.....
The machine will look for panel fiducials, if they are found, it will use them to correct placement data, and parts will be perfectly placed. If it can't find the fiducials, it will delay over the location of each fiducial for several seconds. It will then still proceed to place the components incorrectly, due to the board not being aligned.
"
but the bigger issue is once again that the pick and place continued to place parts even after it couldn't find the fiducials. So I tested again with blue painters tape, and low and behold, it will ignore not finding them, and continue to place parts.....
The machine will look for panel fiducials, if they are found, it will use them to correct placement data, and parts will be perfectly placed. If it can't find the fiducials, it will delay over the location of each fiducial for several seconds. It will then still proceed to place the components incorrectly, due to the board not being aligned.
"Look carefully through the machine setup file for options that disable fiducial errors. I'll bet that some time in the distant past somebody went in and changed some option for how to handle fiducial location failures. There's NO WAY that this is how the machine is supposed to operate, but I can easily believe that there is an option to make it work like that. Do you have the manuals? Do you have a parameter by parameter breakdown of the setup file?
And, if you can't find the issue, you might get on smtnet and see if anybody there knows where this setting is.
Jon
Jon
Another question for you guys. I'm experimenting with using the local 4-point fiducials as some of our boards are rather large. They seem to work great, but I have a question with how they actually work mathematically..
First fid handles x/y, second handles rotation, third handles warp. The fourth one would over define the location, so it can't be used. My theory is that the software only ever uses three, but depending on where the part is located wrt the fiducials it decides which 3 it uses.
Am I on the right track here?
Another question for you guys. I'm experimenting with using the local 4-point fiducials as some of our boards are rather large. They seem to work great, but I have a question with how they actually work mathematically..
First fid handles x/y, second handles rotation, third handles warp. The fourth one would over define the location, so it can't be used. My theory is that the software only ever uses three, but depending on where the part is located wrt the fiducials it decides which 3 it uses.
Am I on the right track here?
You could be right, but mathematically there's no problem with solving an overdetermined system (in the least squares sense). Given some uncertainty in measurement, every added point should bring you closer to the true solution.
Question for you guys on our DEK 265.
It seems to have an override making the set point of the squeege pressure always be 5kg.
I have it set to 12kg, but on the first print, it errors saying "Actual Pressure: 7.5kg (or something), Set Pressure: 5.0kg"
No matter the pressure we change it to, it says the set pressure is 5.0kg
Could it just always use 5kg as the initial calibration? But if so, then the first print is always at the wrong pressure..
Along those lines, is there any way to get more specifics on "pick up errors"? It's painful trying to figure out why it is dumping parts when all it says is that generic error. For example, one issue was the pick height wasn't low enough, so it was struggling to pick them up, but with the generic pick error, it didn't give us any information..
Along those lines, is there any way to get more specifics on "pick up errors"? It's painful trying to figure out why it is dumping parts when all it says is that generic error. For example, one issue was the pick height wasn't low enough, so it was struggling to pick them up, but with the generic pick error, it didn't give us any information..
I think you overestimate the intelligence of the machine. It goes to the prescribed place and starts sucking. The part doesn't get picked up. How can it possibly know why?
So no real update with the D2PAK issue, haven't run that board again. Did a new design last week with a few packages we haven't done before, and it worked fine. So seems like it is due to that specific part and/or weight of it.
Couple new questions for you. We are going to need to expand to have more lead-free capabilities, and THT support. Most boards we're doing are industrial based, so there's a lot of THT connectors.
1) We're thinking of a Heller 1809, 9 heating zones. 9 zones should handle pretty much all boards with lead free right? I don't want to really ever "outgrow" this one, other than needing a second one for more capacity.
2) When you vent the exhaust straight outside without any filtration, do you need any EPA studies or any regulatory approval? Florida, USA.
3) No issue using the same oven for ROHS and Leaded right? Of course printer squeege, soldering irons, etc are all different. Since no lead comes off the board into the oven, I assume it would be fine.
4) For the THT parts, wave vs selective? We currently don't do double sided. Numbers would maybe be 200-500 boards a month with connectors. The issue is, some boards have 50 pin 0.1" connectors, up to 4 or 5 on each board, so 300+ pins.
I like the wave, since there's no programing, but will use more power. I think we'd go with a small novastar like wave or selective solder either way.
So no real update with the D2PAK issue, haven't run that board again. Did a new design last week with a few packages we haven't done before, and it worked fine. So seems like it is due to that specific part and/or weight of it.
Couple new questions for you. We are going to need to expand to have more lead-free capabilities, and THT support. Most boards we're doing are industrial based, so there's a lot of THT connectors.
1) We're thinking of a Heller 1809, 9 heating zones. 9 zones should handle pretty much all boards with lead free right? I don't want to really ever "outgrow" this one, other than needing a second one for more capacity.I'm sure an 1809 is fine so probably is a 1707 or indeed for 500PCBs/month a 1505S, are you looking at new or 2nd user? The Heller websites model numbers brochures are not exactly up to date. If new get a few quotes the competition is pretty fierce and you might find some rivals are cheaper for you, BTU is very similar and there are some fairly high spec Chinese ovens out there for a bit less (although in the UK that margin is slim enough a Trump tariff would kill it, probably hurts BTU vs Heller too as Heller has a Korean factory for specialist&USA orders). The bigger ovens biggest advantage is throughput, more zones & more length does also help with minimum TAL but that really depends on how challenging your boards are, lead-free on its own is not a challenge.Quote
2) When you vent the exhaust straight outside without any filtration, do you need any EPA studies or any regulatory approval? Florida, USA.Can't speak for Florida but in general I think the exhaust fumes are something you don't want to breathe but not something considered dangerous to vent outside. You can re-circulate indoors using filtration systems from people like BOFA.Quote
3) No issue using the same oven for ROHS and Leaded right? Of course printer squeege, soldering irons, etc are all different. Since no lead comes off the board into the oven, I assume it would be fine.
It certainly should be, there are probably some customers/applications out there that would insist on a dedicated leaded line but some sectors are just plain fussy.Quote
4) For the THT parts, wave vs selective? We currently don't do double sided. Numbers would maybe be 200-500 boards a month with connectors. The issue is, some boards have 50 pin 0.1" connectors, up to 4 or 5 on each board, so 300+ pins.
I like the wave, since there's no programing, but will use more power. I think we'd go with a small novastar like wave or selective solder either way.
Its not a section I work in but wave is very useful, as there is some additional setup like peelable soldermask (although your can get the PCB factory to apply that and it goes through reflow just fine) etc as well the board stuffing it saves ~60% time over manual soldering, which might not sound amazing, although it has to be recognised it will successfully solder things easily that are a challenge to a soldering iron. You might need to tweak a few pad-shapes and layouts to get the best results, there are quite a few bits of poor feedback about DDM here and elsewhere in terms of build quality, I would shop around. 2nd user flow wave often comes with a full pot of solder which never hurts. In the UK just about everyone either has or used to have a Blundell CMS400 and there are 2nd user ones everywhere & I would try and find something equally popular over there. I think the killer feature for selective is always when you have double sided mixed technology boards, power is just a bonus. Robots also look interesting for some applications but are definitely something you'd want to get on approval or have extensively demo'd.
Do you have genuine and current requirements for lead solder or is it just a simplicity thing? The most challenging bit for us back in the day (2006 here in the EU) was solder wire & irons for manual soldering, wave & SMT was pretty straightforwards, lots of fuss about nothing in the run up to the change.
Yeah, we currently use a purex filtration unit, which works great, but in this Florida heat, not exhausting that hot air heats up our space pretty badly.. So considering venting outside.
Yeah, we currently use a purex filtration unit, which works great, but in this Florida heat, not exhausting that hot air heats up our space pretty badly.. So considering venting outside.Note that every cubic foot of air you exhaust outside will be matched by a cubic foot of outside air taken in. Depending on the particulars of outside humidity, you might still need additional cooling/dehumidification.