Pick and Place Machine TVM802A / TVM802B

[AndyBig]

Here, take it.

[SSP]

Here, take it.

The biggest thank you that ever happened.

[M4vrick]

Hello Everyone,

First thank you for this topic, it's really a gold mine of information about this pick&place.

I own a TVM802 for a few months and facing 2 issues I can't understand :
- The vacuum sensors does not see continuous vacuum or the software does not want to keep them
- I can't use the vision correction

I'm using Windows 11 for controlling the machine, everything seems good on the drivers or communication side. I tried software version 3.38 and 3.44.

More details about the issues:
- For vacuum, in the interface if I block the nozzle I can see the vacuum value changing for a short period of time and going back to 0. And if I'm trying to use the missing part detection with vacuum of course the software think there is no part attached and it's trying to pick another one. As I see the values changing when blocking the nozzle I assume the sensor is good, and it's doing exactly the same on both nozzle so I dont think I have the same exact problem on both.
- About vision correction it simply does not work at all. The machine is picking the part, going over the camera, I can see the red box around the part. But the part is shifted when it's placed. It's not a problem about nozzle offset or somehting like this, I checked it several times and the shifting on the part placement is related to the position of the part on the nozzle (if the part is more left on the nozzle it'll placed left on the pad, same for the angle). And also it seems the missing part using vision does not work too.

As you can see both issues are related to part detection or correction, I can use the machine and build boards but I need to manually correct some placement before going to the reflow oven.

Can it be related to Windows 11 ? I tried to use an old computer with Windows 7 but the software failed to launch (maybe because of .Net, I still need to investigate).

Any test ideas are welcome

Thanks 

[AndyBig]

Just for your information. I finally decided to update SurfaceMount from version 3.15 to 3.43 and ran into a problem: the lower camera (which adjusts the components on the nozzles) started mirroring the image horizontally in the new version. Because of this, instead of correcting the component's position, camera control actually doubled the error. I fiddled with this for a long time, even decompiling and fixing the MVisionControl.dll file, changing the UpCameraMirrorMode function that sets the mirroring mode. That helped. But then I thought maybe such settings still exist, but under the Manager account.
In SurfaceMount versions 3.38 and higher (and maybe in earlier versions, but I only have 3.15 and immediately after 3.38), the ability to switch users between Operator and Manager was introduced. Switching between them requires entering a password. Using a decompiler and debugger, I extracted these passwords; here they are:
To switch to Manager - admin
To switch to Operator - 123456
Under the Manager account, two more options appear in the bottom menu: fine-tuning and diagnostics. These include the ability to set different mirroring modes for both cameras.
Maybe this will be useful to someone.

[AndyBig]

- About vision correction it simply does not work at all. The machine is picking the part, going over the camera, I can see the red box around the part. But the part is shifted when it's placed. It's not a problem about nozzle offset or somehting like this, I checked it several times and the shifting on the part placement is related to the position of the part on the nozzle (if the part is more left on the nozzle it'll placed left on the pad, same for the angle). And also it seems the missing part using vision does not work too.

By the way, you most likely have the same problem as me: the lower camera is mirroring the image. Therefore, if a part is shifted slightly to the left on the nozzle, say by 0.2 mm, the program assumes it's shifted to the right by that 0.2 mm and commands the nozzle to move to the left by that distance. As a result, the part ends up shifted on the board by 0.4 mm. The same applies to the rotation angle.

[ttt]

Fiducials, the bane of my existence with this machine. TVM802b in my case but it probably applies to a good portion of machines with the Syntek STK1150 USB capture card.

The main issue is that it will not for the life of me detect 1mm fiducials properly if it's run at 100% speed. So after many years I've had enough and tried to debug this. The issue is actually fairly simple: The down camera is 640x480 60hz greyscale, *INTERLACED*. Yep, that's right. The faster it moves the worse the detection gets because the two fields "smear" into each other and OpenCV can't do anything with that. The fix: 1. If the machine is moving (only) split the fields, detect the fiducial in one field only. 2. Once things have settled use both fields to get a subpixel position. It's that simple... And now it even works at 120% speed for me.

I started a new repo with a man-in-the-middle MVision.dll, which also includes other enhancements:

https://github.com/tinic/tvm802-vision

Specifically the non-template circular mode is drastically better, it's now using the same algorithm as OpenPnP does (https://github.com/openpnp/openpnp/wiki/DetectCircularSymmetry). The difference is night and day to say the least. It's my new default mode and does not require setting the size of the fiducial.

YMMV. You'll need a PC with AVX2 support. Use at your own risk. Tested with version V3.35 of SurfaceMount.exe. MVision.dll does not seem to have changed a lot in recent years so my hope is that it'll work with most 3.xx versions.

I am looking at implementing https://github.com/openpnp/openpnp/wiki/DetectRectlinearSymmetry next for the up camera component detection.

[AndyBig]

Great job! Unfortunately, it didn't work for me. When I launch the program, I get an application error in the MVision.dll module. My machine is a TVM802BX with an integrated Intel Atom computer. I tried it with versions 3.38 and 3.43.
I also started a small modification of MVision.dll, but with more modest goals – I'm missing aiming marks on the camera crosshairs, so I'm modifying the original MVision.dll to add them.

[ttt]

machine is a TVM802BX with an integrated Intel Atom computer.

Yeah, no AVX2 on Intel Atom. Try the non-AVX2 version I just added.

[AndyBig]

Yeah, no AVX2 on Intel Atom. Try the non-AVX2 version I just added.

Everything worked, thanks. But the same problem remains as with the native software: poor fiducial detection until you sand it down. After that, fiducial detection starts working reliably.

[ttt]

Yeah, no AVX2 on Intel Atom. Try the non-AVX2 version I just added.

Everything worked, thanks. But the same problem remains as with the native software: poor fiducial detection until you sand it down. After that, fiducial detection starts working reliably.

Yeah, I think the settings I had in there were for my specific PCBs. I added a UI to customize (CTRL-ALT-M to open). Also took your idea of the tick marks (0.25, 0.5, 1mm), useful.

[AndyBig]

Yeah, I think the settings I had in there were for my specific PCBs. I added a UI to customize (CTRL-ALT-M to open). Also took your idea of the tick marks (0.25, 0.5, 1mm), useful.

Excellent. And I see you've brought back the fine lines, that's also good

[AndyBig]

I tested it on several PCB - generally, you can find settings that allow it to recognize fiducials on all of them. However, on some, it's on the verge of losing recognition, so it's probably safer to slightly sand down the fiducials. But overall, it works much better than the stock software, thanks for this modification