Open Placer A New Affordable PCB Assembly Machine

[Kjelt]

A few thousand.  I would say that number is more like 25,000.   Please give examples of reliable machines that are 2,000?

Reliablle in the context of hobbieist home usage, definitely not 24/7 pro operation ofcourse 
The cheap chinese machines that start at $2500 to $5000 are an example of pretty reliable machines but also need maintenance.
BTW also the pro machines need a lot of preventive maintenance, I saw the planned maintenance schedule for a Philips/Assembleon machine and they needed around 8 hours of downtime every other week for inspection and maintenance.

[SMTech]

No the challenge of PnP is all of it, the whole process from start to finish needs to be understood and understood well by the engineer(s) designing a machine. If they don't they make silly assumptions about what is acceptable in both the hardware and software controlling it. Its the fact this hasn't happened that makes these cheap machines so frustrating and why those of us who have proper machines are so disparaging about some of the offering out there. We see the walkthroughs & processes and tips and tricks and tweaks and gotyas and literally none of them apply to machines designed by people who understand what they were designing and who they were designing them for. Low volume machines should not simply be smaller shoddier versions of bigger ones, they also need to pay attention to the fact people will be building lots of one-off jobs and changing frequently.

[Kjelt]

You're right, forget that, this is mainly the software, probably the most underestimated part of the whole machine.
Even OpenPNP is becoming a gigantic lug of unfriendly user experience with little flexibility.

[SMTech]

A few thousand.  I would say that number is more like 25,000.   Please give examples of reliable machines that are 2,000?

Reliablle in the context of hobbieist home usage, definitely not 24/7 pro operation ofcourse 
The cheap chinese machines that start at $2500 to $5000 are an example of pretty reliable machines but also need maintenance.
BTW also the pro machines need a lot of preventive maintenance, I saw the planned maintenance schedule for a Philips/Assembleon machine and they needed around 8 hours of downtime every other week for inspection and maintenance.

That number seems excessive to me, based on what 24/7 3 shift non-stop running?
On our Essemtec the routine is documented as a daily sweep out of any dust on lenses and emptying the discard tray. A weekly nozzle clean (which is zero downtime if you have spares). A monthly clean of the feeders, inspect slide rail greasing etc, An annual service and calibration during which it will get its filters replaced (~1day + a somewhat expensive engineer).

If you think the 2500-5000 units are "reliable" you probably have very different definitions of reliable to myself & mrpackethead, even with low volume you can very quickly be placing 100K parts, if you have a a feeder/machine that every few hundred parts needs this or that doing to it, its very very annoying.

[mrpackethead]

My yamaha machines, have a daily inspection and a few 'maintaince' tasks. Mostly this is just to check that everything is running correctly, things are secure and the various safety features are operational.   This includes checking all the nozzles, transports, air lines, and electricals.  A lot of that is for Health and Safety.

We probalby spend about 1 hour for every 60-100 hours on our machines in other maintaince, these are older machiens and things do break.

[Kjelt]

If you think the 2500-5000 units are "reliable" you probably have very different definitions of reliable to myself & mrpackethead, even with low volume you can very quickly be placing 100K parts, if you have a a feeder/machine that every few hundred parts needs this or that doing to it, its very very annoying.

Oh we agree but as I said, for hobby and very low production use.
You are accustomed to driving a Mercedes of 100k$ and expect it to start each day and drive 1500km a day for a couple of years without problems if that is your baseline .......
Now try to buy any new car for 3k$ , there is none ......
So what to expect from a brand new car for 3k$ ? Not much right?

Same with P&P, one linear motor on your Essemtec costs more than the chinese machine.
Still the chinese machine can be bought, it can easily place 100s components a day and for hobby use it is no problem to have to wait somewhat longer and have a few misplacements now and then.

[SMTech]

Well my Essemtec predates their adoption of linear drives, so thats 3 motors and 2 belts. In the car world its a VW Polo not a Merc, by contrast I don't think a 2.5-5k machine is even a Dacia, it might not even be a go-cart. A Merry tiller might be closer...
  http://tractorbox.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=7921   

For a small busy developer trying to make a few boards, if they can't push a button and walk away its not saving them money or time. One thing I can tell you is the factory rate to put small batches though our line is less than a developer.

[Furkan]

Dear all

Open Placer is very new in the market and the Indiegogo campaign was a great rush for us. Preparing one device for yourself and preparing a commercial product is very different. The documents were missing at that time, shipping damages occured and missing final checks all resulted in unhappy campaign supporters.

We tried to improve our user manuals and the packaging everyday. 2019 made Open Placers are much better than 2018 made Open Placers.

We have decided to prepare short videos for the mentioned problems and improve our final check before sending a device.

Actually, we felt sad for the people who couldn't use their machine and we would like to do our best to fix their issues.

Furkan

[mrpackethead]

Send one to Dave @EEVblog Mailbag and get him to do a review on it.   You'd get yourselves massive exposure.

[seon]

For me, not really. I bought this machine to place 0603 components and also microcontrollers. I have changed the 2 cameras (originally very little definition with bad focal), I also added resistors to leds. I corrected the firmware to correct the A axis.

Hey ucdiode86,

Can I please ask what cameras you used when you swapped out the original ones?

Do you have a link to the ones you bought?

I am thinking of getting an OpenPlacer and I need to place 0402 and sot883, and I understand the cameras that ship with it can't do it, but with higher res cams, it should be ok.

Thanks

Seon
UnexpectedMaker

[Kean]

Send one to Dave @EEVblog Mailbag and get him to do a review on it.   You'd get yourselves massive exposure.

Dave had a Liteplacer kit sent to him in the mailbag (EEVblog #740, 4 years ago).  I don't believe he ever finished assembly of it, let alone running it.

You are probably right about the exposure though.  I'm sure the exposure via the above mailbag episode did result in a bunch of sales, and there are few Liteplacer topics on here to determine if it is good value for the money.

There are other small vlog channels who would be more likely than Dave to actually put the effort in to get something like this running, but because they'd get beyond just doing an unboxing they would show just how good/bad it is.  So any exposure is more likely to actually be negative.

[OwO]

For a small busy developer trying to make a few boards, if they can't push a button and walk away its not saving them money or time.

Honestly that's a pile of BS. When was the last time you hand placed a board? ANYTHING is better than hand placing boards. For a typical 10x10cm board with a few hundred parts it's at least an hour of continuous, eye straining labor. Why do people buy manual PNP machines? Because it saves the physical strain of handling hundreds of tiny parts. If a PNP machine can automate 99% of the process then it's a win.

One thing I can tell you is the factory rate to put small batches though our line is less than a developer.

That does not say much. No company employs "developers" to do manual assembly work. The real killer of in house assembly for prototyping is automated PCBA services like JLC SMT, which is only around $10 setup costs per board for assembly.

[NorthGuy]

Honestly that's a pile of BS. When was the last time you hand placed a board? ANYTHING is better than hand placing boards. For a typical 10x10cm board with a few hundred parts it's at least an hour of continuous, eye straining labor. Why do people buy manual PNP machines? Because it saves the physical strain of handling hundreds of tiny parts. If a PNP machine can automate 99% of the process then it's a win.

I agree. I would be happy to buy a very slow PnP machine which would place my prototype boards while I'm away. If only it could work reliably.

[SMTech]

For a small busy developer trying to make a few boards, if they can't push a button and walk away its not saving them money or time.

Honestly that's a pile of BS. When was the last time you hand placed a board? ANYTHING is better than hand placing boards. For a typical 10x10cm board with a few hundred parts it's at least an hour of continuous, eye straining labor. Why do people buy manual PNP machines? Because it saves the physical strain of handling hundreds of tiny parts. If a PNP machine can automate 99% of the process then it's a win.

One thing I can tell you is the factory rate to put small batches though our line is less than a developer.

That does not say much. No company employs "developers" to do manual assembly work. The real killer of in house assembly for prototyping is automated PCBA services like JLC SMT, which is only around $10 setup costs per board for assembly.

SMTech, funnily enough stands for "surface mount technician" which is my job title, so I hand build boards or partially hand build boards whenever I can't use the machine to do it or when its not worth doing. Yes its not fun, and I go to great lengths to avoid it and not an inconsiderable amount of complaining if if is made necessary when it shouldn't be. However even a good machine  takes time to setup for a new job, and for low volume your parts might not come in packaging that suits, nice tho it is to be able to define all your little strips as trays, its a slow and time consuming process so often its quicker to whip out the tweezers or use the manual P&P.
There is a fine balance in there between the complexity of your boards, the number you are building, the pitch/package of the devices you are using that move the balance around between the best options for a given user, machines that are fiddly to setup and use will shift that balance far more quickly than you might have planned for when you bought it. Equally if your machines placement accuracy is such that things need "a little tweaking" afterwards you again lose the time you think you were saving. If your boards almost always are 100s of parts and small enough to fit on these machine and you need it often enough, sure it could be worth it, however given some of their quirks and very low feeder count, I would suggest loading the machine permanently with all your very common stuff, and putting a manual P&P next to it for everything else (tweezers suck). However if you build simpler stuff or very infrequently there's a very good chance it it really isn't saving you anything, and you should just be honest with yourself that you want a new toy.

As to the chinese assembly services, I think if we ignore the semi secret chinese market only ones (like the JLC you refer to) they are charging much more for the setup of an assembly job (not that they itemise it) than $10. If I put in some made up numbers into Elecrow for instance I get a number really quite similar to the one we would quote ourselves. It even scales in a similar way with volume.

[OwO]

As to the chinese assembly services, I think if we ignore the semi secret chinese market only ones (like the JLC you refer to) they are charging much more for the setup of an assembly job (not that they itemise it) than $10. If I put in some made up numbers into Elecrow for instance I get a number really quite similar to the one we would quote ourselves. It even scales in a similar way with volume.

Maybe you can be the first one to market with fully automated PCBA of SMD passives; I see a lot of demand for JLC SMT to be made available outside of china
I have seen the lines, it's a line of 5 Yamaha i-pulse M20 machines with 180 feeders each, for a total of 900 feeder slots. For a basic coverage of most SMD passives you just need something like 400-500 slots.

[IconicPCB]

While it may be so ( 400 to 500 smd passives feeders ) You also need good volumes to ensure the reels do not age ( adhesives and paper tape as well as plastic tapes age .

The business model becomes a bit more complex.

[mrpackethead]

While it may be so ( 400 to 500 smd passives feeders ) You also need good volumes to ensure the reels do not age ( adhesives and paper tape as well as plastic tapes age .

The business model becomes a bit more complex.

I run 150 slots across two YV-100ii's to do my passives ( down to 0402 ).. The last 50 slots have been lost to a tray for picking misc IC's from.     This works pretty well for me, as we can pretty much go from altium to lines ready in about 10 minutes.      My Proto jobs get interleaved in between making stuff.  If you are only makign stuff inhouse, 150 passives gives you a pretty good library to work from..    This mostly works for us.      Being a contract PCBA would be a whole different matter. 

The reasons that using PCBA's is painful, are the same reasons that i'd never want to be a PCBA!    Maybe not so bad for high volume, but for low volume, I can't see how you can effectively do it outsourced..  The JLCPCB model is interesting, but theres lots of Parts they dont' have ( and can't source ) ( for example i use some crypto IC's that are baned to export to China ).   It might work for some limited use-cases. 

Macrofab in the USA, are doing a similar thing.   I really liked what they are doing   ( https://macrofab.com/ ) and if i was back doing small volumes again i'd look at these guys really favourably.. The service is good, they dont' have part limitations, and the quality is good.  Yes, its more spendy than china.

For those in the US,   do PCB's  / PCBA's get hammered by the increased Tarrifs.?

[Furkan]

Dear all

As the Open Placer Team we decided to make some changes.

First of all, from now on Open Placer will be sent as fully assembled. To prevent shipping damages we will place it in white styrofoam.

Secondly, we are replacing the bottom (table) camera with Logitech C270 webcam. Normally it has fixed focus but we are modifying it to have adjustable focus. We are preparing mounting pieces for that camera (actually only the PCB of it). Former camera was recording videos with 640x480 resolution but this one can record videos with 1280 x 720.

Thirdly, we will send a USB stick with the Open Placer with all configuration files will be in it. If some people are curious about USB stick we will also send a download link for the files containing adjustments for that specific device.

I guess these ( major or minor ) changes will minimize the complaints of Open Placer users. Actually, majority of the critics were made by Indiegogo supporters but not the ones purchased the PnP after the campaign. I guess our quality checks were poor in that rush period.

The price of Open Placer will be kept constant.

Furkan
The Open Placer Team