Pick and place machine kit, with vision

[EEVblog]

FYI
I now have one of these kits.
Unboxing video coming shortly, then will get David2 to built and we'll have a play around.
Sorry, haven't been following the thread, its can't do QFN or QFP?

[rx8pilot]

Excellent news, D2 should have some fun. I should be done with my cut tape feeder in the next few days - may work with that machine.

Hoping it can do QFN.

[Rasz]

Juku to sound like juki?

anyway I got an idea to see parts (at least three sides) while they are being placed - flat mirror at 45" with a hole for the needle + camera at 90" to the needle.

or even a cone at 45" like those 360" ball mirrors, no need to attach camera to the needle with a cone

edit:
option 2 - camera in the center, vacuum line bending around on the side, going narrow (steel needle) back to center and ending in the noozle

focus will be main problem

[M4trix]

FYI
I now have one of these kits.
Unboxing video coming shortly, then will get David2 to built and we'll have a play around.
Sorry, haven't been following the thread, its can't do QFN or QFP?

C'mon Dave! One day has already passed! You know what does that mean? 

[mikeselectricstuff]

Juku to sound like juki?

anyway I got an idea to see parts (at least three sides) while they are being placed - flat mirror at 45" with a hole for the needle + camera at 90" to the needle.

or even a cone at 45" like those 360" ball mirrors, no need to attach camera to the needle with a cone

edit:
option 2 - camera in the center, vacuum line bending around on the side, going narrow (steel needle) back to center and ending in the noozle

focus will be main problem

You need to image the underside, not the top, and you need to do it against a uniform background.
My Versatronics handles this nicely - when the head moves all the way up, it flips a 45 degree mirror under the head to vision the part with a horizontal camera.

[JuKu]

Sorry, haven't been following the thread, its can't do QFN or QFP?

Short answer: Not yet. With the next software version: Yes, with operator assistance and maybe automatically as well.

Long answer: See the previous page.

[JuKu]

Juku to sound like juki?

:lol:
It comes from Juha Kuusama. I got the nickname in the eighties when I went to Nokia to work on the very first GSM phone. Nokia used initials everywhere. JK was already taken, as was JKu, so I became JuKu. In Finnish language, that is easy to pronounce and means "Wow", so it stuck.

[EEVblog]

C'mon Dave! One day has already passed! You know what does that mean? 

The unboxing video is already uploaded and waiting 

[Royce]

C'mon Dave! One day has already passed! You know what does that mean? 

The unboxing video is already uploaded and waiting 

Nice! Looking forward to the review.

[M4trix]

C'mon Dave! One day has already passed! You know what does that mean? 

The unboxing video is already uploaded and waiting 

Good! 

[Icchan]

If you're able to facilitate reels, increase the machine's speed by using better motors / controller and give it some code that it can understand when things are going badly (lost part -> lost vacuum), this can be very good machine.

It's doing accurate enough job as it is (im quite suprised by the robustness of your vision algorithms), but the speed and reliability can be an issue regarding mechanical things like components not being exactly straight in the tape.

Good software is paramount since you want to decrease the setup time to be low enough that it makes sense to use it even with smaller boards and less frequent work.

 

[JuKu]

> im quite suprised by the robustness of your vision algorithms

Not mine: http://www.aforgenet.com/framework/

> components not being exactly straight in the tape

That error is smaller than what surface tension corrects at reflow.

> you want to decrease the setup time to be low enough that it makes sense to use it even with smaller boards and less frequent work.

I think I'm there as far as setup goes.  You need to get the parts out of your storage on your work area, there is no way around that. With the machine, you put them down with double sided tape by a ruler and a couple of mouse clicks tells the machine which tapes are where.

Of course, the software can be improved to no end. the hardware first revision is done, so this will be the focus for next few months. (First on the todo list: Speed improvements, small pitch IC placement, BGAs)

[pickle9000]

@JuKu

I have a couple question about the parts pickup.

- If a part is missing from the tape will the system carry on an pick up the next available?
- If I was working on several projects at once (normal) could I mount the tape/parts on a sheet of class or other hard surface material and use that on the bed? This would allow me to work on multiple projects and save setup time. 
- Is is possible to slide tape onto the bed from an outside reel? I realize this would require the user to build a special carrier to hold the tape flat but it would be very convenient. I use certain parts all the time and having them live on the machine even if they have to moved manually into a carrier would be a time saver.

The machine looks very nice, I'm looking forward to the review.

[JuKu]

> If a part is missing from the tape will the system carry on an pick up the next available?

It does not notice and makes a dummy placement. The vision uses tape strip holes for location, not the parts themselves. (The goal was to make prototyping as fluent as possible; training the vision for all the parts out there kind of defeats that purpose. On the other hand, there are only three types of tapes, and training for the hole is about the easiest image recognition task there is.

> could I mount the tape/parts on a sheet of class or other hard surface material and use that on the bed?

Yes, you could. You need to figure out a standard way of doing this, so that the part strips end up close to same location when you change the sheet for the machine to find them, but that doesn't sound hard at all.

> Is is possible to slide tape onto the bed from an outside reel?

Why not? You would still want to use the tape to attach the parts to the table so that the part tape lays flat and give support from the bottom (some resistor tapes have weak underside). Also, the software remembers where it left off an a particular tape. You could put a long strip of standard parts on the table and only replace them when the whole strip is used. The width of the machine has room for 125 or so 0805 resistors.

[Kjelt]

> If a part is missing from the tape will the system carry on an pick up the next available?
It does not notice and makes a dummy placement. The vision uses tape strip holes for location, not the parts themselves. (The goal was to make prototyping as fluent as possible; training the vision for all the parts out there kind of defeats that purpose.

Is it perhaps an idea to add a vacuumsensor to the pickup head and warn the operator if there is not enough vacuum after the pickup ergo there is no part pickedup or not good picked up.

[pickle9000]

> If a part is missing from the tape will the system carry on an pick up the next available?
It does not notice and makes a dummy placement. The vision uses tape strip holes for location, not the parts themselves. (The goal was to make prototyping as fluent as possible; training the vision for all the parts out there kind of defeats that purpose.

Is it perhaps an idea to add a vacuumsensor to the pickup head and warn the operator if there is not enough vacuum after the pickup ergo there is no part pickedup or not good picked up.

Is the vision system only on the head or is there another camera that can see the device on the needle? Certainly that could be used to determine if a component pickup was a failure.

[JuKu]

There is an up looking camera as well, that is used to calibrate out the needle wobble. Using it for checking component presence could be done, but would make the machine very slow. The pickup is very reliable, I don't think camera checking is needed.

[pickle9000]

There is an up looking camera as well, that is used to calibrate out the needle wobble. Using it for checking component presence could be done, but would make the machine very slow. The pickup is very reliable, I don't think camera checking is needed.

So if you place more components than needed for a run you would need to indicate the next starting point for a board if you went back to it at a later date. Does it save starting points for the components or expect all tapes to be full? Are polarity sensitive devices and chips checked for orientation before placement?

[JuKu]

>  So if you place more components than needed for a run you would need to indicate the next starting point...

No; if you put 50 components on the table but use only 17, next time these parts are needed, the machine continues from spot 18.

> Are polarity sensitive devices and chips checked for orientation before placement?

When you set up the tape positions, you tell the machine also the rotation of the parts on the tape.

[pickle9000]

>  So if you place more components than needed for a run you would need to indicate the next starting point...

No; if you put 50 components on the table but use only 17, next time these parts are needed, the machine continues from spot 18.

Is that count information in a saved file? Can it be reloaded if for example another setup was done?

Do you have any video of chips being placed? Or even a couple of shots of how accurately it does the placement?

And yes I have a million questions.

[JuKu]

> Is that count information in a saved file?

Yes.

> Can it be reloaded if for example another setup was done?

Not currently, but this is a good idea.

> Do you have any video of chips being placed? Or even a couple of shots of how accurately it does the placement?

What I have now is shown on http://www.liteplacer.com/introduction-f-a-q/ page. Those are actual results. As said, IC placement improvements are next on the development. Once there are results on this, there will be videos and more images.

[matkar]

Hi JuKu!
I'm following your thread for quite some time now and it seems that one of the biggest concerns users have is the speed of placement. A year ago I did a research since I had the idea of building my own P&P and found some nice NEMA8 dual hollow shaft stepper motors to be used on P&P head for rotating the component. You can basically place four of them instead of one NEMA17 motor in the same space and you can duct the vacuum through the shaft instead of using a separate P&P shaft mechanism you drive with a NEMA17 and a belt.
I'm sure using four heads (or even two) would increase the speed substantially. It might be worth a try.

Here is the link to such a motor:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/NEMA8-Hollow-Shaft-Stepper-Motor-for-pick-n-place-head/1228145416.html

[JuKu]

Courtesy of Elektor Magazine,
A timelapse video of their build:
And a photo gallery: http://www.liteplacer.com/mechanical_assembly_gallery/

[Neganur]

what's this horrible text to speech thing