Just got our machine setup yesterday, and I'm quite impressed so far.
Some things I've noticed:
Thick components/plastic tape is a bit annoying, but I should have read the manual better in the first place. Solved the issue by loosening the screw in the feeder connected to the metal tension strip and swapping peeler friction "damping ring" for the "1.5N" insert. You can test if you have the right tension by using the manual test on the peeler.
The needle for advancing tape is quite aggressive, if it's even slightly off center you'll have parts flying everywhere. I also adjusted it a bit higher (it has slots) because even when aligned it was knocking parts around.
The "bulk" tray system works about 95% of the time, it seems to sometimes pick up a part and decides it's 90 degrees off, so it places the part sideways. I haven't figured out the exact cause yet, but aligning the bulk pieces horizontally seems to help, and the two I noticed specifically go in sideways were picked up poorly at the edge instead of the middle. The software isn't smart enough to know what shape the part it picks up should be, so it just guesses the orientation it should be. The stock trays are also slightly reflective from the 3d printing, specifically the ridges, so if you don't adjust the sensitivity, it will try picking up a little splotch of light instead of the part, it would be better if we could define a minimum number of pixels you expect the part to be. We're also going to try and make the trays more matte with a matte black painted sticker.
There also isn't a good way to mount big parts, we have a few bits that are bigger than the loose trays, and the tape they're in is wider than any of the feeders we got. My fault for not checking, but I'm thinking I'm going to design some cut tape holders and/or larger bulk feeders myself. If I do get around to it, I'll post the STLs or if I get really keen, some auto-configurable system to let you pick tape width or component size.
More just a comment on my own cheapness, but you lose about 30-35 parts (with 4mm tape pitch) for the peeling. I wish the peelers were closer, I'm surprised no one has come up with a design where they're right under the tape so they only need to feed 2-3 inches. Realistically I should have just bought longer cut tapes or full reels, but
Speaking of lost parts, they just get dumped out under the machine if you peel the tape after putting it in the machine, so I might try to lift the machine up an inch or so and put a baking sheet lined with felt or foam to catch parts.
Lots of little complaints, but it already exceeds my expectations for the machine, I knew what we were getting into with a budget machine like this. Definitely some fiddly setup, but once it's fully loadded, it will pay for itself in 6 months. Within about 8 hours I've got it programmed with our old design and testing placement of parts. Next step is loading all the parts, and we'll be good to go.
Mostly I just wish there were more settings available in the software, so hopefully the machine is popular enough for them to keep up development (or someone figures out how to get OpenPnP to run it)
Edit: Matte black paint on a sticker helped a lot, let me decrease the threshold a lot for the downfacing camera. Closing the lid also helped a lot. I also found that you can adjust the contrast/threshold of the up facing camera per feeder, which helped a lot with the rotated parts. I notice originally the camera was only identifying the pads, but adjusting the little setting at the bottom of feeder setup let it see the whole part.
I really wish the "test pick" button let me do a whole cycle and pickup the part and bring it over to the camera instead of just putting the nozzle down onto the part (or in the case of the bulk pickup, just highlighting the parts on the screen)
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