Can NeoDen4 pick bulk single components like various capacitors from a bulk slot or only single bulk component like IC?
I know Mechatronika PnP can pick one of many single components from a bulk slot. That sounds like a perfect match for a rapid prototyping of a single board!
Yes I heard bad opinions on Mechatronika but also on NeoDen4 :-)
I also know that NeoDen YY1 can pick single component out of many components from a bulk slot.. but I also heard disastrous opinions on them, so my choice goes between NeoDen4 or Mechatronika :-)
Neoden 4 can't do it, at least with the current software. I bought a Mechatronika M10V and the bulk picking feature works very reliably. I have now two bulk feeder trays so that I can load one while the machine is working. It gives a lot of flexibility but not a lot of speed or a good man/machine ratio.
I can really tell you do not get a Mechatronika. If you buy that you are within their environment, very limited and all you can do is throw more money after them.
And Mechatronika customers, just open the head camera cover, to watch the 10$ jumpwired camera where they scratched legs of the QFP from the PCB to jumpwire it with a potentiometer and oscillator. I have seen that at 3 customers so far.
I have replaced the camera at some point with a chinese CVBS camera with OSD menu, it worked flawlessly.
Most chinese PNP machines use AHD (full frame higher resolution) cameras nowadays. Some AHD cameras also support CVBS.
AHD cameras will be faster since they are not interlaced - like CVBS. The CVBS resolution 720x576 (PAL) is absolutely okay for component detection; an interlaced picture needs 2 half frames to form a full frame.
On the MX80 we even traced their crap windows application that they triggered component photos a little bit too early on their flying camera setup and that caused component drops. Without having full control to the software it's difficult to fix such problems.
during movement interlacing looks like this:
It's over 20 year old technology.
After a 10K EUR service where they replaced the motors and all the electronics they did not fix the pulley properly which caused the entire portal to oscillate. Also part of it was a new camera (I was expecting non-interlaced but they just continue with the same shit, so absolutely worthless)
This is not a user error (which they always use to claim and they try to find excuses for their failures).
They claimed that the new motors are faster - however the observed speed was just just the same, other M80 machines even performed faster than our one initially due to different configuration. They did not care about doing a proper setup after the expensive upgrade.
Stepper motors on the M10V cost around 50$/piece on Digikey (we checked that last time)
The feeders are just 2 stepper motors, one pushing a plate with solenoid stubs forward - retracting is done via gravity, and some plastic tapes can lock up an entire feeder box. 2 Steppers for 14-20 lanes, while they charge like 200$ per lane.
To work around I have installed pneumatic CL feeder on the machine, which solved that problem. I controlled the CL Feeder via USB with my own software, no need to go through their system.
Mechatronika dropped the support for us so I reverse engineered the entire machine 5 years ago - directly after their full service.
I re-designed their nozzles back then and manufactured 10 pieces, each of them cost around 10$.; Mechatronika charges almost 100$, their shady distributors 170-200$; material cost is maybe around 20 cent.
The last nozzle we ordered/they delivered was clogged with dirt, again for the price it's not acceptable. Though, there's no runout on them, it's just a piece of soft steel with a stainless needle of a syring attached.
Their software is very bad, there's no multiselect available to place multiple selected components at once, placing one component needs like 4-5 mouseclicks. The optical recognition has permanently failed for an onsemi tssop on our side and one 0402 capacitor did not work, the shape was rounded and there were different kind of reflections and the edges looked a little bit inconsistent under the camera.
However I was able to solve all those issues with our software.
I have written my own software for it and use opencv, the component drops have minimised and the placing quality also has improved.
Mechatronika is not using an affine transformation for matching the component location on a PCB which is another disadvantage. They use two reference points for component alignment which means they are only using trigonometry to adjust the position; that is the highest level of math used in their application.
The affine transformation is a very handy way to map component locations to a PCB and it's the most accurate way.
If I'd buy another commercial machine this would be a requirement for me.
To buy their machine just for loose component picking is like walking on very thin ice.
I stopped using the machine 3 years ago since I moved to another country, I have built another machine myself and use the software which I have written for the MX80 with that new DIY machine now. I also built 8mm electronic feeders myself.
I'm still working on the new machine, and goal is to add 8 heads, currently only one is installed; My software is already prepared for multihead.
Maybe once I go back where the MX80 is I might add more PNP heads to it as well.
The price of their machines and the service does not match up, it's a company from Poland charging prices from the west, but delivering poor effective support.
We were under stress to manufacture our products back then and Mechatronika just did not care, even though we have paid a lot money to them. The oscillating gantry and not fixing this problem by themselves after getting notified is a big no go.
We increased the tension on the belt of the Y axis first - which increased the friction of the entire system and worked to a certain degree but only fixing the pulley on the Y axis motor itself (which required heavy lifting) solved the problem.
We always gave them the chance to fix it - we proposed that they should fly to us instead us flying to them for a useless training.
But we also warned them to disclose the experience with them if they won't act and fix the problems we experience, they decided it's better to publish the experience we had instead of looking at the root causes (which never was missing training).
HASL based PCB surfaces don't work well with their camera, fiducials will bounce the light outside the camera leaving an uneven spot on the screen. you can wrap a foil around the camera and form a tunnel for the light to the PCB, this worked as a workaround.
If fiducials or marks cannot be seen properly by the camera fiducial detection will not work properly and panels cannot be placed.
Again no statement from this shady polish company about this issue back then.
There is a chance that their pick and place machine works properly with your project - but there are some components which cannot work well with their machines due to differences of the component belt, and some components cannot be handled with their optical recognition implementation due to inflexibility. And since Mechatronika doesn't care about supporting that it might be a go or no go for you.
Don't say I did not warn you ;-)
The MX80 they used to sell this machine incl. feeder for 40-60K USD... and that's what you get from Poland:
picture from another customer:
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