Quad QSA-30A will arrive tomorrow

[jmelson]

Well, at long last, my Quad QSA-30A is supposed to arrive on a truck tomorrow morning!  I bought this at an auction in Austin TX for $500 (I was the only bidder).  Hopefully, it is in working shape.  I will end up paying $5000 total, with shipping, feeders, fork lift rental, plywood (to prevent forklift sinking into back yard), etc. etc.

This is a 2250 Lb machine, 5 x 5.5 feet, 3 nozzles with automatic nozzle exchange, supposedly good for 13K components/hour.
It has flying vision on all 3 nozzles (with line-scan cameras) and is supposed to be reck-solid for 0.65 mm lead pitch.  I'm going to try to add an upward camera to get more accurate placement of 0.5 mm lead pitch parts.

Here's hoping it is in good condition.

Jon

[Mangozac]

What a beast! How many 8mm feeders can it take?

It's crazy how old machines become worth such a low amount that the most expensive part is freighting them within your own country!

[SMdude]

Bahahaha!!! 

Sorry, I just had to laugh!!
I bought my pnp early this year and it was summer, I had no problems getting it into my shed.
In the mean time I decided it would be a great idea to buy another house, the winter rain came and my backyard became non forklift friendly!
With only a couple of weeks left to move it(I bought a forklift as it was going to cost too much to hire a forklift at both ends)(and every man needs a forklift!) I have had to install a brick path to get the forklift to my shed to remove it.. Finally I have the forklift in my shed and pnp firmly attached to its pallet. Next for getting it all back across that dodgy brick path. Hopefully it doesn't all sink half way across.... 

Nice score on the machine! I wish I lived in the US, second had gear like that here in Australia is rarer than hens teeth.

[jmelson]

What a beast! How many 8mm feeders can it take?

Looks like about 75.  Way more than I will ever need.

It's crazy how old machines become worth such a low amount that the most expensive part is freighting them within your own country!

Well, it may have something to do with the current pandemic and economic mess, a good time to be buying capital equipment.
But, of course, I have to get it running.  Right now, it seems to be having an electronic fault, so I may have to buy some VME boards.
This could get expensive.

Jon

[SMdude]

Make sure all of the boards are seated in properly if you haven't already. Things rattle around a bit whilst on the back of a truck.

[jmelson]

Make sure all of the boards are seated in properly if you haven't already. Things rattle around a bit whilst on the back of a truck.

Even worse than that!  The original hard drive went bad, and they just laid another drive on top of it, not screwed down to anything.
So, that drive was flopping and bouncing around for 900+ miles from Austin to here.  But, it boots up and loads the software.
Then, I had problems with the PC (Celeron 566 MHz) communicating with the VME computer (68020, I think).  The ISA-bus interface
card is totally passive, but had 2 50-pin cables crimped to the board.  I hate those things.  One of them was coming apart, so I unsoldered the wire termination and soldered in a 50-pin standard header, and crimped a 50-pin female to the cable.

Then, it wouldn't go to the "ready" state, with servos powered.  I eventually found a blown fuse.

Now, I can get it totally powered up, but there is a bad theta motor (nozzle rotation) on one head.  This prevents it from homing the axes.  The X, Y and each Z are brushless servos, but the rotation is done with 5-phase steppers.  One of them seems to be bad, but with a weird symptom.  Three of the wires show continuity with each other, the other two wires have continuity just to themselves.
That actually seems like a really weird failure for a 5-phase stepper.  It just seems odd that it could have two isolated groups of coils.
(On the other motors, all 5 wires have continuity.)

I don't find obviously blown transistors on the stepper driver for that axis.

There's a huge amount of software functionality in their program, it will take me some time to learn my way around it.

Jon

[Mangozac]

Our used UP2000 printer was like that - the HDD had been replaced and the new one was just floating in the drive bay, but at least they had packed it in with some pink static foam.

Do you have wiring diagrams for the machine? Repairs would be immensely more difficult without them.

[jmelson]

Do you have wiring diagrams for the machine? Repairs would be immensely more difficult without them.

The manuals are very hard to get.  I found an outfit that has both the service and operator's manuals, and he offered to throw them in for free when I bought $23000 of feeders from him.  Well, when I said I wasn't going to give him 23K, he won't return my emails anymore.  The only solution I've found so far is to have a guy who is running these machines to make a copy of his manuals.  He knows he has the operator's manual, he wasn't so sure about the service one.  So, I'm trying to get the manuals, and hopefully will have them in a week or so.

But, this thing is just about posessed!  The computer boots up just fine, but the machine will only go fully operational, with all servos turned on, ONCE a day!  The first time I turn it on, it comes up and will go "ready" on the first try, then all the rest of the day, I can get the computer running, but it will not go "ready", meaning that the contactors that power the servos will not pull in.  This is obviously where I need the manuals to trace things out.

Anyway, I was getting a "backup battery error" every time I loaded the program, so I replaced a lithium battery on the VME CPU board, and this error message has now disappeared.  But, presumably, the info in the battery-backed memory has been lost, and I have no idea how to get it put back.  I have no idea if that is related to the issue of only going "ready" one time per day.

And, the reason I'm powering it up and down a lot is that one of the rotation motors appears to be bad.  These are hollow-shaft 5-phase motors, so are going to be scarce as hen's teeth.

Jon

[SMdude]

Wow!! 23000 for some free manuals!!!

I'm sure you will be able to find some somewhere, have you tried asking on SMTnet.com?

For the faulty motor, I would try and disassemble it and see if you can see where the fault has occurred. There must be a common point where all the windings join. Might be easier than finding a replacement. What have you got to loose?

For the machine not going fully operational, you could try some freeze spray about the place and see if your able to get it to go a second time, or try heating up a section with the hot air gun and see it it won't come online after heating a certain area, try it in halves and see if you are able to narrow it down.

When I bought my KE-730 it had had a fault that caused it to reboot after an hour or so when it was in use.
By the time I got it it was rebooting every few minutes or less. Turned out to be a cracked solder on a fet that was mounted to the case in one of the power supply modules, so as it would heat up, power would drop out to the computer.
Take note of any LED's in your power supplies and make sure they are the same when working/not working and perhaps check all of the voltage outputs from them.

[Mangozac]

Wow $23k is extortion!

You probably already know this but with intermittent faults make sure the root cause isn't bad relay or contactor contacts. My UP2000 was powering up cantankerously and it turned out that the main contactor contacts were worn out. New contactor and she has been running sweet since.

[jmelson]

Wow!! 23000 for some free manuals!!!

Ah, well, he was going to sell me about 25 Quad feeders for the 23K and throw in the manuals.  That is not crazy for refurbished and guarateed feeders, but it is way out of my budget.

I'm sure you will be able to find some somewhere, have you tried asking on SMTnet.com?

Yes, even before I got the machine.  Some people mentioned who to contact, but I didn't get much of a response from that.

For the faulty motor, I would try and disassemble it and see if you can see where the fault has occurred. There must be a common point where all the windings join. Might be easier than finding a replacement. What have you got to loose?

these are 5-phase motors, they have 5 windings wired in a ring arrangement, electrically.  there is no common point.  These are also quite small motors, single-stack NEMA 23, there isn't going to be a lot of space inside.  And, to display the two separate groups of windings, it must have TWO breaks in the ring.

For the machine not going fully operational, you could try some freeze spray about the place

PLACE?  This machine has more boards and wiring in it than a Tesla!  Until I get the manual, I really can't trace out what happens when you click these buttons.  It appears that the E-stop and ready button may be handled in hardware, with a permission input from the computer.  The fact it needs a 10+ hour shutdown to come alive again starts me thinking down a road to a software issue.
The VME CPU does have one of those Dallas Semi Timekeeper modules with an added-on external battery.  I replaced the dead battery with a couple of alkaline cells, and it got rid of the "backup battery error" message, so that was poking into the right area.  But, presumably, the info the battery was supposed to be preserving is lost, and I don't know how to put it back.  The 2nd part of the massage seems to indicate it was preserving what nozzle was last on each head, which would be a really small amount of data, like 3 bytes.

When I bought my KE-730 it had had a fault that caused it to reboot after an hour or so when it was in use.
By the time I got it it was rebooting every few minutes or less. Turned out to be a cracked solder on a fet that was mounted to the case in one of the power supply modules, so as it would heat up, power would drop out to the computer.
Take note of any LED's in your power supplies and make sure they are the same when working/not working and perhaps check all of the voltage outputs from them.

Yes, I have checked a few power supplies, there are racks of them, and several have been bypassed due to failures.  The ones that are still hooked up seem to all be well within tolerance.

Thanks for the suggestions,

Jon

[SMdude]

Ok, to test if it is a timed battery thing, disconnect the battery and reconnect it after 10 hours and see if the machine has to wait a further 10 hours to boot.

I know it would have a lot of cards and power supplies, but just start on one side and see if you can make a difference to the restart time. It would be a real pain having to wait 10 hours to know if it may have made any difference. Do you have a portable air conditioner you could sit in front of the machine to cool the electronics?

If there are power supplies not working and bypassed, I'd be looking into these first(fix all the obvious problems first) There probably isn't much wrong with them, could just be cracked solder on through hole parts. The machines do see a lot of vibration.

[jmelson]

Ok, to test if it is a timed battery thing, disconnect the battery and reconnect it after 10 hours and see if the machine has to wait a further 10 hours to boot.

I know it would have a lot of cards and power supplies, but just start on one side and see if you can make a difference to the restart time. It would be a real pain having to wait 10 hours to know if it may have made any difference. Do you have a portable air conditioner you could sit in front of the machine to cool the electronics?

If there are power supplies not working and bypassed, I'd be looking into these first(fix all the obvious problems first) There probably isn't much wrong with them, could just be cracked solder on through hole parts. The machines do see a lot of vibration.

I could probably just disconnect the battery and short the terminals on the computer side for a few seconds and get the same result.
I may try this, but right now the machine is quite torn apart.

Some IDIOT replaced a 5-phase stepper motor on the rotation axis with a 2-phase motor.  No WONDER it was vibrating and not moving smoothly!  Geez!  I have the whole head apart now, but need some help form an old Quad tech on how to get the motor completely off the head.  Then , I may have quite a problem sourcing a 5-phase, hollow-shaft motor.  The same motor is used on several Samsung-built machines, so I may get lucky.

The power supply issue is all related to the feeder power supplies, which are mostly separate from the rest of the machine.  So, I don't think that is the issue.

Thanks,

Jon

[SMTech]

I would think the motor is quite easy to obtain, if you google Samsung theta motor you get quite a few results which at least point you to some Chinese supplies of new, refurb or clones of this kind of kit.

[jmelson]

I would think the motor is quite easy to obtain, if you google Samsung theta motor you get quite a few results which at least point you to some Chinese supplies of new, refurb or clones of this kind of kit.

Yes, and I have sent inquiries.  But, if I can buy a brand-new motor from the manufacturer's authorized distributor in the US for $150 or a used motor from China for $110 plus shipping, the new motor sounds like a better deal.  I've made a call to their Chicago branch, haven't gotten a reply yet.

But, at least there are options.

Jon

[jmelson]

Not so simple.  Sanyo Denki confirms this is a custom motor made for Samsung, and they can't even give me specs on it, or if there is a standard product that would be a replacement.

Contacting anybody at Samsung for anything not related to phones or home appliances seems very difficult.  The division that made these P&P machines apparently is no longer part of Samsung, it was spun off when Samsung Aerospace went kaput.

But, there are tons of these machines in the far East, so used parts are plentiful.  I will hopefully be able to place an order for a used motor today (working around the time difference).

------------------------

Next issue:  The machine doesn't want to go to the "ready" state with the servos enabled, except very rarely.  There is an I/O page that is supposed to show all the input and output points.  But, I finally discovered this page only works in 640 x 480 screen mode.
The second picture is what you are supposed to see, the red and green dots show the state of the input and output points.
But, the 1st picture shows what you get with any higher screen resolution, I think the boxes with the signal names are drawn OVER the indicator dots.  But, now that I know how to make that page work right, I can see the ready button is not being sensed by the computer.  I verified that the switch contacts are actually working right, so it is the wiring or interface board where it is not getting through.

Hopefully the guy who is still using one of these machines in the US will find a place to have his manuals duplicated, and I will be able to trace the wires when I get the manuals.

This is just kind of a progress report.

Jon

[SMTech]

Spun off at least twice in fact. I've not noticed the Samsung/Hanwha guys* over here refurb and sell a Quad but they certainly still do CP45V & that generation etc when they come their way. This would suggest parts remain available to some extent unless they are cannibalizing others...

*I suspect the Quad repair guy does tho' but they are not the kind of outfit that splashes that on their website/social, just pages like this https://www.tronteq.co.uk/product/quad-qsa-30v/

[jmelson]

Spun off at least twice in fact. I've not noticed the Samsung/Hanwha guys* over here refurb and sell a Quad but they certainly still do CP45V & that generation etc when they come their way. This would suggest parts remain available to some extent unless they are cannibalizing others...

*I suspect the Quad repair guy does tho' but they are not the kind of outfit that splashes that on their website/social, just pages like this https://www.tronteq.co.uk/product/quad-qsa-30v/

Yes, it looks like the Samsung CP33, CP40 and CP45 all use the same 5-phase stepper motors as the Quad QSA-30A and V.  The CP30 and and QSA-30
apparently used a 2-phase stepper motor for the rotation (theta) axis.  Anyway, I am always giving people the Sanyo Denki motor part number, and not telling them what machine it is for, to avoid confusion.  That is apparently how this machine got fouled up, they put a QSA-30 motor on a QSA-30A without looking at the part number.  The Qtips documents have a list of part differences between the machines.  (Qtips is the Quad internal service notes.)

Jon

[HwAoRrDk]

Next issue:  The machine doesn't want to go to the "ready" state with the servos enabled, except very rarely.  There is an I/O page that is supposed to show all the input and output points.  But, I finally discovered this page only works in 640 x 480 screen mode.

Are you running Windows with a non-default font size (i.e. DPI) setting? It looks like the indicator dots are being drawn at a fixed pixel offset in the window, but all the other window elements are larger than normal, so the dots are being obscured.

[jmelson]

Are you running Windows with a non-default font size (i.e. DPI) setting? It looks like the indicator dots are being drawn at a fixed pixel offset in the window, but all the other window elements are larger than normal, so the dots are being obscured.

Yes, this seems to be the problem, or part of it.  I did not set up this system.  In 800x600 and above screen resolutions, the diagnostic window appears INSIDE the main program window.  In 600x480 resolution, the diagnostic window shows as full-screen, and displays right.  Until I get a complete disk image copy of the original disk, I'm a little worried about making tricky changes to the system.  I know I can change the scren resolution down and back pretty safely.

I used to be pretty competent with Win 95, but that was some 20 years ago.  How do you change the font size?  Is it in control panel/display?  or, somewhere else?

Thanks,

Jon

[HwAoRrDk]

IIRC, when you go into Display Settings (where you change resolution), you can click the 'Advanced' button at the bottom, and then the first tab has the font size setting, which is really also a DPI setting. I believe the normal setting is 'Small', at 96 DPI.

[jmelson]

IIRC, when you go into Display Settings (where you change resolution), you can click the 'Advanced' button at the bottom, and then the first tab has the font size setting, which is really also a DPI setting. I believe the normal setting is 'Small', at 96 DPI.

Great, thanks, I will try that tomorrow!  640x480 is an AWFUL screen, and the rest of the program doesn't fit well.

Jon

[jmelson]

IIRC, when you go into Display Settings (where you change resolution), you can click the 'Advanced' button at the bottom, and then the first tab has the font size setting, which is really also a DPI setting. I believe the normal setting is 'Small', at 96 DPI.

Ahh, couldn't wait ...  So, I tried with 1024 x 768 and 75% normal, small and large fonts, didn't change the bad display.  So, it seems like the definition for that page is just bad.  I'm surprised nobody ever complained.  I think I'm running the last version of the software for this machine.  Well, at least I know how to make the page function when I need to diagnose sensors, etc. on the machine.  Then, I have to reboot to go back to reasonable screens.

Thanks for the help.

Jon

[MR]

could you take a picture of the vision modules (especially how they designed the illumination)?
I wonder how they solved this topic, some stray-light is required in order to make items be captured properly.

[jmelson]

could you take a picture of the vision modules (especially how they designed the illumination)?
I wonder how they solved this topic, some stray-light is required in order to make items be captured properly.

Pictures won't tell you a whole lot.  CyberOptics and QuadAlign are pretty similar.  They have a red diode laser in a housing with some kind of lens or slit assembly that creates a fan beam, and then a lens that collimates that so it projects a parallel line of light.  Then, on the other side of the nozzle, there is a line-scan camera chip just bare with no optics.  These are similar to what was used in older FAX machine scanners.  On my machine, it is a 4000-element linear array of photodiodes with a CMOS charge-coupled analog shift register.

The system is that after picking up the part, it is lifted to a Z height such that the best feature of the part is in the linear light beam.
The part projects a shadow on the linear camera chip.  The nozzle is rotated until the shadow is narrowest.  This has the part square to the beam.  The centroid of the shadow is recorded, then the nozzle is turned 90 degrees and the centroid is taken again.  This gives the rotation alignment and the X-Y offset of the part on the nozzle.  This is then used to correct the part placement.

You can Google quadalign and get a page from goppm (the people who bought the rights to Quad technology) about it.

Later Samsung machines used a 2-D system.  The CP45 has 6 nozzles in a row.  They have a mirror that clicks in at 45 degrees under the nozzles.  Cameras and lighting arrays give six separate chip cameras a 2D view of the underside of the part.  The advantage here is that the solder pads of QFN parts and the balls on BGAs can be examined and aligned.

Jon