Omron RNS-pt AOI machine - anyone have any experience?

[chrisLF]

Hi there folks,

We've just bought a second hand Omron RNS-pt AOI machine.  It works, but the problem is that we don't know how to program it.  I've been working through the copious pages in the manuals and am making progress, but nothing beats having someone with experience to be able to turn to with a few questions.

If anyone out there is familiar with this machine I would really appreciate a few minutes of your time :-)



Thanks in advance.

[Reckless]

I wish I could help you.   I've had 3 AOI systems: 2 Marantz and 1 VI Technologies.   Luckily the Marantz were older and easy to program even though they used Macs.   There were like four basic commands.   The VI I just got and haven't turned on.   I heard omrons are really nice.

[chrisLF]

Thanks Reckless,

Yes it looks like a very nice system.  The problem is that it's the first AOI we've ever used so although we are aware of the principals of how they work and what they do, we don't have any personal experience.  The software works with three coloured rings of LEDs at different angles pointing to the components.  This gives rainbow rings round the solder joints as the different colour / angles reflect back into the camera.  With this the software can measure the shape of the solder joint and give a pass / fail.  It's a very comprehensive system and that's what's taking time to learn as each component has about 50 threshold parameters to set, along with colour ranges and shape ranges etc...
I get the feeling there is an easier way to program it with some sort of self teach mode, but I can't seem to find it.  Hopefully someone will point me in the right direction soon :-)

[SMTech]

I saw that shawline were selling this, were they not able to offer any pointers from themselves or whoever they sold it for at all?
That said KPE are pretty friendly people so if you haven't talked to them already, it might be worth a shot as they are probably who you would have to turn to for any support/spares anyway.

[chrisLF]

Thanks SMTech,  Yes we are talking to the supplier and the previous owner, but no luck so far.  We are also speaking to KPE, who are friendly as you say, but it seems that there is no longer an Omron Engineer in the UK who can help.  For the moment, I will keep bashing through the manuals.
Thanks for your help :-)

[SMTech]

Yeah, that is not ideal, wonder if that applies to the new ones too, and is probably not a problem unique to Omron. At the moment there are still too many AOI manufacturers out there which means too many to choose form when new, and a big risk the support won't be there when the machines get older whether its a machine you've always had or one 2nd hand. There are several UK based AOI manufacturers and several more that make scanner based systems before you even get to the 10-15 "established" AOI manufacturers and an equally big number of Chinese machines that may or may not be mostly secretly the same machine. Outside of the Chinese brands for pick&place we're now at ~7 big manufacturers and then some fringe ones catering to some of the niches mostly with smaller machines. We need the same to happen to AOI. It also seems to me from what I understand of them that they haven't yet taken the leap into machine learning, cloud and crowdsourcing the data they use to improve their performance. There has to be bags of potential there when they do.

[Reckless]

Do you know much about VI Technologies?   Are they any good?   I never heard the name and surprised jabil was running them.  I bought this VI 3200.  I have no idea of its capabilities.   I'm so lost with the jargon 3d,  5d aoi.  I need to make sure it can detect parts and would be nice to check they are on paste properly.  Marantz older systems were pretty simple and not to complex.

[SMTech]

Not me no, well I recognize the name, although its seems they are part of Mycronic now. As a small batch builder I'm not convinced AOI pays for itself (unless you pay ~£12k like the OP) so its not something we've looked at too much. We don't get enough faults of the type AOI is designed to catch with the types of jobs we currently get from our customers, maybe if it were higher volume or more fine pitch/BGA we would.

I've seen FAI type machines from ExtraEye, AOI systems & iScan in person, all seem pretty decent at what they do, which is NOT AOI (they can't do solder joints etc as they are 2D flatbed scanner systems. I've seen DB Automations AOI machine that has the angled light and roving camera of more established AOI machines, for less money, seemed quite useable from what I remember. I've also had a walk though an ALeader system, again an approachable system but there was definitely a fair bit of jargon involved and lots of options/algorithms you could choose to use, I bet it could be quite intimidating if you just sat own in front of it and expected things to happen.

I'd certainly had the you really need to get one of these "sell" from salesmen representing both Omron&KOH YOUNG, they are crazily expensive clever systems and their thing is "true 3D" where the approach goes beyond cameras and angled light. I think you'd need extensive trials & demos to justify those bad boys but they can in theory catch pretty much any fault with very low false positives.

[Marina CSM]

Hi everyone
We also got a used Omron RNS-PT AOI machine, unfortunately it doesn't have the user manual, could someone help me and tell me how can I get one? 
Thank you in advance.