Assembly line update

[mrpackethead]

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

[kylehunter]

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

Ah alright, thanks!

Only info I could find in the manual is how to do alternative parts, which only works once the first part runs out.

[kylehunter]

And the fiducial saga continues!

So, as I stated before, I changed the delay time to allow the board to be ensured that it was against the stopper before starting any placement. I also thought changing the fiducial type from block to PCB made a difference and it showing an error if the fiducial isn't found. I tested the panel with  blue painters tape, and it did error like it should.

However, we ran boards this week, and one panel had all the parts shifted by a couple of mm, like it used to do.. I don't know what  caused the fiducials to not be found, 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.....

This is such a big issue, because no matter what the reason for it not finding them, it needs to error out when it can't find them.

Here's a video where I show the issue: https://youtu.be/-G8sfD5xlYM

"
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.
"

[jmelson]

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

[kylehunter]

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

Jon,

Thanks. That is 100% my opinion on what is happening. I have looked through the manual, and the VIOS data manual and can't find anything about it. Also have looked through every setting in the machine with no luck. The guys I got the machine from are thinking of just reinstalling the software, because they have no clue either..

[kylehunter]

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?

[spongle]

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.

[kylehunter]

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.

Yeah, had a bit of a brain goof there lol.. I wasn't thinking fully about the 3d warp or stretch it could have, and least squares.

Thanks!

[kylehunter]

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..

[kylehunter]

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..

Here's an image showing what I mean. In the background you see how my front and rear set pressure is 9kg, but on the initial "calibration" print, the set pressure is 5kg.

Question on the Opal also. Can someone please please please explain in human terms how the vacuum levels work? The explanation and examples in the manual are awful. Saying to break it down into thirds, subtract out the open nozzle, it makes zero sense to me.

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..

Thanks as always!

[kylehunter]

Alrighty... DEK problem solved - ended up not being a problem at all.

So, what I didn't realize, was that the knead pressure was 5kg, and the first print was always kneaded, so that's why the set pressure showed 5kg. After it was done kneading, the set pressure changed to 12kg like was expected.

Thanks so much for all the help!

Still trying to find some answers on my questions with the Opal!

[NorthGuy]

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?

[kylehunter]

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?

That's the thing, it is picking it up - hence why I want a more verbose error..

For this current issue, it is with a large FET, in a D2PAK package. It will pick the part up perfectly, take it to the camera, check it, then it will dump the part saying "pick up error". When it clearly picked up the part, viewed it with the camera, then said pick error. It's happening a ton, like 25% of these FETs are getting dumped.

I assume it is a vacuum issue, but that is another can of worms, understanding what the manual means. Again, if I could view a better log from the machine to where instead of "pick error" it says "vacuum error" or something.

[Styno]

Could be vacuum but could be vision as well. Does the machine have a logging option where it shows the expected dimensions (and pins) and the measured values? If it's vacuum, maybe the nozzle is too big and overlaps the package edge thereby sucking false air or the nozzle is damaged and sucking false air. Have you checked?

[48X24X48X]

Some D2PAK has a circle marking that is embossed but not at the center of the body, slight off the center. If your D2PAK component has it, maybe the edge of the nozzle tip is exactly around half of this circle marking? Just a thought...

[SMTech]

Assuming most machines offer adjustments and tolerances on similar parameters, a pick error could indicate that the image the camera has seen suggests the corrections needed to offset/rotation are outside what has been set as acceptable, it could be a vacuum check although I would expect your machine to be able to tell if that is what is was. A DPAK needs to be picked up @ its body center which implies a pick offset from the tape pocket center. Outside that and your nozzle would perhaps be half sucking empty space.

D2 & DPAKs can sometimes be a touch tricky I haven't found a guaranteed one size fits all package definition on our Essemtec as they are slightly different shapes particularly to the camera.

[kylehunter]

Yeah I honestly don't know. The nozzle certainly isn't overlapping the edge of the part, and seems to be picking it up fine. This is again how it's so frustrating that there's no verbose error. I have checked for any logging, with no luck, but I can try again.

[kylehunter]

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.

Thanks!

[SMTech]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[kylehunter]

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hey! Thanks a lot for all that info. I didn't give enough information, so let me clarify on some of your points.

Everything will be used, buying from the same company that we got all the original equipment from. The 500 pcs a month is my best estimate for just the THT boards for the first while. We are currently doing around 2000 boards a month of SMT only. There's definitely not a throughput issue with our 1500 currently, but I don't want to have to upgrade the oven a third time down the road, hense the 1809.. But open to thoughts on the 1707 being enough, since for used, that'll save around $10k.

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.

The guys I'm buying from seem to like the novastar waves, and the little reviews I've seen here and Smtnet seem decent, so that's what I'm basing it on.. Definitely open to thoughts and recommendations on them!

Oh and I guess a new question, if we are doing a smt and THT board that doesn't require rohs, any issue of having leaded smt and rohs THT?

Or, once we get a solid rohs oven, is it normal to just do everything rohs, and only leaded for required industries? I'm just trying to avoid needing a separate leaded and rohs wave/selective. It would be nice to just do all rohs, but leaded is so much easier..

[SMTech]

We run ROHS everything, running a true leaded production is pretty hard work as so many components were simply replaced with ROHS variants so the ones for leaded processes simply don't exist any more. Some industries (e.g Aviation) are or were having some of their parts reworked so that tinning etc was put back to a SnPb instead of newer lead-free alternatives but that's a massive ask for anyone without those kinds of budgets.

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.

You can obviously do the maths for the throughput you should get out of any given oven length and only you know how massive some of your boards might get but I can certainly understand the desire for headroom as that's exactly how we choose our stuff too.

[kylehunter]

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.

Nope, exactly what you said. Our main clients don't care either way, we have a Heller 1500, so leaded it is. The main reason for this upgrade as previously stated, is we now have rohs requests, as expected.

With the bad talk about rohs and struggles of lead free, it has just scared me. But the thought of simplifying everything to a single lead free line, does sound appealing!

[sokoloff]

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.

[kylehunter]

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.

Oh trust me, I know that!! Haha, that has been our biggest struggle with the assembly line honestly. Since we have such a small space now (~600 sqft), it's so hard to control parameters. We have almost 4 tons of cooling in the space, but with the purex filter, we can't maintain the temperature when the oven is running. The humidity also drops down into the 30's. So I think by venting outside, we have a better chance of controlling the humidity that comes in vs the heat as it is now.. But definitely open to ideas on the topic.

[SMTech]

Well I've been to Florida once and I couldn't live there, stepping out of the airport was like walking into a sauna (it was the afternoon right between 2 heavy rainstorms and humid as hell).
In our factory the static female workers have heaters despite a perfectly decent working temp that is in fact too warm if you're on your feet (as I am running the line), I reckon they'd love to work right next to the oven. I don't envy the sound of the space either, I'd consider our factory small and its almost 10 times yours.