NeoDen YY1 Pick And Place Machine With Under $3K Price for Hobbiest/Low vol Usag

[mikeselectricstuff]

i just posted a 6 month review video of my YY1. ive picked about 20,000 components on it thus far and the only real issue ive had is the tape advance needle was starting to not be reliable. but neoden sent a replacement asap and i installed it in this video.

Did you postmortem the faulty unit ? Symptoms looked like a bad connection

[Smartbeedesigns]

Neoden had me do some test before they sent the replacement and it wasn't a connection issue or the needle binding up. It had to of been the solenoid was slowly failing.

Either way the new one worked right away so im glad it solved the issue.

[eflyersteve]

I wish mine worked at least consistently.  Even after replacing the bearings and slide on one of the heads, I still have issues with being able to repeatedly place parts in the same location.  I can cycle through all component locations and then immediately do it again and the locations will likely be off.  Belts seem to be tight and I can cycle through the components forward and backward and it doesn't seem to make a difference so I don't think it is a backlash issue.   

The cover tape peeling mechanism has been a lot of trouble.  I have installed the small set of tension devices and it is still too much and pulls the components through when it advances the tape.

To those of you that have machines that can place 0402 parts consistently, consider yourself lucky to have gotten a machine without issues.

A quick question - When picking loose, bulk passives, does your machine orient them correctly?  Mine will locate the part but will place the parts without consideration of orientation.  The vision system does recognize them and seems to align properly but won't rotate them 90 degrees when needed.  Seems like that portion of the software was not finished. 

[bugrobotics]

I'm bummed to say I haven't been impressed.  I've placed a few thousands components thus far (all 0603 passives and bigger). 

Issues I've observed:

• setting the offsets in the machine is funky and sometimes offset aren't saved
• the machine looses steps too easily.  I can run a program maybe 10 times (20 PCBs total) and by the end the machine needs to be turned off and on again because the picking/placing becomes unreliable
• the up facing camera doesn't seem to work that well.  It will act as if parts are there when they are not.  This behavior started a few days ago.  I haven't messed with any settings
• dropping angled components on the board is not reliable (other than 0 and 90).  I have adjusted a connector supposed to be set at 52° probably 20 times and the angular move is not correct almost ever
• it always fails to find the fiducial at the end of the program.  I get a fiducial find error after every program
• if you have the panel layout improperly defined (too big) the machine will try to move outside of it's own max machine coordinates, disregard it's own limit switch and slams into the end stops, loosing steps and requires a restart
• the needle retract spring is too weak on my machine.  Luckily shortening the spring by about 1/3 solved almost all of the "needle stuck" errors.

[mikeselectricstuff]

The frustrating thing is that few, if any of the issues are down to the low hardware cost, but more to do with poor design and poor software.
It has shown that _someone_ can produce a useable machine around this price, and hopefully another manufacturer will do a better job of it.
Even if Neoden make improvements, they have lost a lot of credibility.

[bugrobotics]

The frustrating thing is that few, if any of the issues are down to the low hardware cost, but more to do with poor design and poor software.
It has shown that _someone_ can produce a useable machine around this price, and hopefully another manufacturer will do a better job of it.
Even if Neoden make improvements, they have lost a lot of credibility.

Couldn't agree more.  I wouldn't be able to ship a prototype that had a few of these behaviors (like disregarding the limit switch, traveling beyond a known limit, etc).  The tape peeler mechanism is actually a non-issue for the most part on my end and I give them credit there as it's relatively robust so far.  The software needs a bit more work. 

[HwAoRrDk]

That the software can ignore or override the limit switches seems particularly egregious.  I would expect such a thing to work at a lower level - like, a limit switch directly and forcibly stops the stepper driver for that axis, then also signals the controller. Not like "hey, the X axis limit has been reached, thought you might wanna know, but if you're busy, I'll just leave a note for you to read later".

[EEVblog]

I'm bummed to say I haven't been impressed.  I've placed a few thousands components thus far (all 0603 passives and bigger). 

Issues I've observed:

• setting the offsets in the machine is funky and sometimes offset aren't saved
• the machine looses steps too easily.  I can run a program maybe 10 times (20 PCBs total) and by the end the machine needs to be turned off and on again because the picking/placing becomes unreliable
• the up facing camera doesn't seem to work that well.  It will act as if parts are there when they are not.  This behavior started a few days ago.  I haven't messed with any settings
• dropping angled components on the board is not reliable (other than 0 and 90).  I have adjusted a connector supposed to be set at 52° probably 20 times and the angular move is not correct almost ever
• it always fails to find the fiducial at the end of the program.  I get a fiducial find error after every program
• if you have the panel layout improperly defined (too big) the machine will try to move outside of it's own max machine coordinates, disregard it's own limit switch and slams into the end stops, loosing steps and requires a restart
• the needle retract spring is too weak on my machine.  Luckily shortening the spring by about 1/3 solved almost all of the "needle stuck" errors.

I'm trying to toss up between this and a 2012 vintage Madel PX3700 that needs some TLC. See my other thread.
At least the YY1 has the potential for improvements that sound like mostly software?

[asmi]

I'm trying to toss up between this and a 2012 vintage Madel PX3700 that needs some TLC. See my other thread.
At least the YY1 has the potential for improvements that sound like mostly software?

I would go for YY1 because you will have some vendor support if something goes wrong, and there are other owners here who can also help, while with that old machine you are on your own. And in general I prefer new stuff to used, but that's the matter of personal preference.

[EEVblog]

I would go for YY1 because you will have some vendor support if something goes wrong, and there are other owners here who can also help, while with that old machine you are on your own. And in general I prefer new stuff to used, but that's the matter of personal preference.

Yes, that was my thought in the other thread.

[sinewave]

Has anyone been able to do 0201s with the YY1 as I cannot, I highly doubt that it will be able to reliably place 0201s but just wanted to check if anyone had success?

[Pinkus]

I would go for YY1 because you will have some vendor support if something goes wrong, and there are other owners here who can also help, while with that old machine you are on your own. And in general I prefer new stuff to used, but that's the matter of personal preference.

If Neoden would send software updates, Daves question would be easy to answer. Then I would probably have already ordered a YY1 as well. But since a new software is always connected with the purchase of a new motherboard, I don't even think about it - this is a 90s strategy that has no place in this millennium. Therefore, I do not support the Neoden and its approach by buying a device.

[EEVblog]

If Neoden would send software updates, Daves question would be easy to answer. Then I would probably have already ordered a YY1 as well. But since a new software is always connected with the purchase of a new motherboard, I don't even think about it - this is a 90s strategy that has no place in this millennium. Therefore, I do not support the Neoden and its approach by buying a device.

I had forgotten about that. That is the dumbest concept I've ever heard. Makes me not want to touch it either.
I'd be fine with having to supply my own programmer or whatever etc, you don't expect a product like this to have seamless firmware updating, so long as firmware updates are available in some form.
Getting a whole new board is a complete no-go.

[sinewave]

The controller board uses a bog standard STM32 with an SWD header exposed, unsure about the touchscreen controller but it may be possible to convince NeoDen to supply firmware files, doubt it though.

[Kjelt]

Just speculation but firmware files have always been the weakest point in security for any device, with the exception of open communication ports.
The chinese market is so competitive in stealing and copying eachothers products that this might be their only chance for protecting their IP.

But IMO if I was Dave I would seek for a CNC mechanical equivalent in his surroundings and build a decent OpenPNP based PnP machine. That would make some nice YT content for his followers.
It really should not be that hard.

[EEVblog]

Just speculation but firmware files have always been the weakest point in security for any device, with the exception of open communication ports.
The chinese market is so competitive in stealing and copying eachothers products that this might be their only chance for protecting their IP.

I asked Neoden why they can't just send out a HEX file and they just replied "Sorry,not convenient to share below info to customers.
So yes, the only way to upgrade the firmware is to swap the entire PCB.
They are still working on the two fiducial problem, and said it's not quick to do.

If they really needed to do that, they could have put the micro on a small daughterboard and just sent that out.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Just speculation but firmware files have always been the weakest point in security for any device, with the exception of open communication ports.
The chinese market is so competitive in stealing and copying eachothers products that this might be their only chance for protecting their IP.

I asked Neoden why they can't just send out a HEX file and they just replied "Sorry,not convenient to share below info to customers.
So yes, the only way to upgrade the firmware is to swap the entire PCB.
They are still working on the two fiducial problem, and said it's not quick to do.

If they really needed to do that, they could have put the micro on a small daughterboard and just sent that out.

From various things I've seen from Neoden over the years, I suspect that  they subcontract out their firmware to a third party, who charges them per unit.
Even that could be managed in a more competent way.
There is simply no excuse to ship a non-upgradeable device in this day & age.
 

[MR]

Just speculation but firmware files have always been the weakest point in security for any device, with the exception of open communication ports.
The chinese market is so competitive in stealing and copying eachothers products that this might be their only chance for protecting their IP.

I asked Neoden why they can't just send out a HEX file and they just replied "Sorry,not convenient to share below info to customers.
So yes, the only way to upgrade the firmware is to swap the entire PCB.
They are still working on the two fiducial problem, and said it's not quick to do.

If they really needed to do that, they could have put the micro on a small daughterboard and just sent that out.

Two fiducials are bad practice, imagine you have a little bit board warping things might be a little bit off then.

Three fiducials are supposed to be the absolute minimum. I also support two "anonymous" fiducials (known points on the PCB which are not necessarily part of the BOM) in my software but I always use three and do an affine transformation on it.
When using two fiducials simple trigonometry has to be used to adjust the component locations.
I built my own machine and I'm upgrading on the go.

We had one board in the past which warped a little bit it was very impressive how the yamaha pick and place machine which our external assembly contractor used handled those issues a long time ago.

For the binary blob, maybe they have some GPL violations as well in the software if someone catches the image they might investigate what's on it resulting in destroying their business model. Certainly they might work towards fixing that for the future.

[mikeselectricstuff]

AIUI Two fids are standard, but most subcontractors ask for 3 to detect a board inserted the wrong way round.

If your PCB is so warped it needs more than 2 fids then you probably have bigger problems to worry about.

[MR]

AIUI Two fids are standard, but most subcontractors ask for 3 to detect a board inserted the wrong way round.

If your PCB is so warped it needs more than 2 fids then you probably have bigger problems to worry about.

that's the smallest side-effect that you can detect if the board is right or not. Their software is very likely doing some affine transformation.
Two fiducials cannot do that as you might know. The warpage of pcbs doesn't need to be extreme, small warpage can already cause some issues with some machines, so they won't detect the fiducials properly anymore (strictly pointing at Mechatronika at that point).
Warpage itself is not a big deal if you know how to deal with it properly. With lower quality TG material it can be a common problem after reflowing one side of a double sided PCBs.

Mechatronika is also only using two fiducials, I used this for a few years and went to affine transformation .. and never looked back.
Since their software was such an epic failure with our components we rewrote the software and things evolved step by step.
The machine is not being used anymore but we built another one in Taiwan (with all the knowledge we collected over the years).

[sinewave]

Technically there are two fids, one being the origin point.

[dkonigs]

I asked Neoden why they can't just send out a HEX file and they just replied "Sorry,not convenient to share below info to customers.
So yes, the only way to upgrade the firmware is to swap the entire PCB.

I hate lazy excuses like this.

Given that many people here now likely have older spare PCBs from these board swaps, I'm wondering if anyone would like to actually try and copy the firmware off of them and see if field upgrades are actually possible.  It may just be a matter of putting together the right sort of programmer cable, and otherwise using standard tools.

Right now it sounds like their only reason is that they don't want to write instructions for plugging in an STLink dongle, or couldn't be bothered to write some sort of bootloader that could install updates off a microSD card or USB stick.

[Kjelt]

Since you do not know if the pcb layout, components etc is still the same even if you could copy and flash a newer firmware to an older board you still could potentially damage it rendering your guarantee to void.

[EEVblog]

Right now it sounds like their only reason is that they don't want to write instructions for plugging in an STLink dongle, or couldn't be bothered to write some sort of bootloader that could install updates off a microSD card or USB stick.

I think they are protecting their code.
I told them that I probably wouldn't buy one because of this and they are fine with that. And they know how much public exposure I can bring them. So don't expect them to change their stance on this.

Brymen do the same thing, although they do trust dealers like me with the HEX file under NDA.

[EEVblog]

From various things I've seen from Neoden over the years, I suspect that  they subcontract out their firmware to a third party, who charges them per unit.
Even that could be managed in a more competent way.
There is simply no excuse to ship a non-upgradeable device in this day & age.

Yeah, if this was the plan form the get-go then why wouldn't you desing a small processor daughterboard?
At this sort of volume and target customer base, everyone would have been ok with getting posted a small chip board to update the firmware. Cost is minimal, HEX file never gets released.