Quad QSA-30A will arrive tomorrow

[MR]

Hi,

pictures still say more than thousand words ;-)

We're working on improving the optical vision system in our DIY machine, we have started to build a new machine for a second location a while ago (we already have a commercial machine from a vendor from Poland who cannot even count until two in the mechanical area, it was a good inspiration how to not make a pick and place machine).

I'm just interested in the LED positions of those cameras, how many angles they use for flooding the objects with light. I've seen quite a few on youtube already.

Our final system will use a USB 3.0 based camera system with 5 sensors (4 with small resolution, one with high resolution) + fpga (for multiplexing and triggering).

[jmelson]

OK, this is NOT a standard camera, it is a LINE SCAN camera, exactly one line of pixels.  The light source is a red diode laser with optics to project a narrow line of collimated light across the nozzle.  The shadow of the part falls on the line scan photodiode array with no lenses.
The first picture is the assembly on the machine head, the 2nd picture is the light source/camera assembly off the machine.  In both cases, the light source is on the right, the camera on the left.

They do not flood the part with light, they see the shadow of the part while staring right into the light source.  When I next have the machine up enough to do so, I will take a picture of the camera diagnositc screen, it shows a graph of light intensity vs. pixel position across the scan line.

Jon

[MR]

Seems like you're on a big project... maybe mission.

[jmelson]

Seems like you're on a big project... maybe mission.

Oh, YES!  But, I got a really good deal on the machine, $500 + auctioneer's premium.  There were a whole bunch of little things that I'm taking care of.  Cracked air filter, feeder power supplies have been replaced twice, leaving the old supplies in place and adding new ones, a sensor on the conveyor broken off by the movers, stuff like that.

Then, two real issues.  Somebody replaced one of the rotation motors with the wrong type, and the machine mostly will not go to the "ready" state with the servos enabled.  I have the right motor on order from China, and another user of this model has duplicated a set of manuals for me and they are on the way.  Once I ge the manuals, I can try to trace out the ready botton and see why it is not getting to the computer.  So, by sometime late next week, I home to have it up and running.

THEN, I have to learn their software!  My current machine (Philips CSM84) is simple by comparison.  You create a file that says "take a part from feeder # 12 and place it at coordinates 123.45 234.56 rotated 90 degrees on head 2".  Really simple.  This machine has automatic nozzle changers, and vision templates for each component type.  it has a built-in program to take a CSV board stuffing file and convert to their internal format.  I will probably have to add new parts to the vision templates, but that looks fairly easy.

One of the issues is communication.  I mucked up the ethernet configuration and now it recognizes the ethernet card but doesn't bind any services to it.  I tried to put a CDROM drive on it, but it needed drivers to be loaded to talk to it.  It does have serial ports, but I'll need the manuals to know the protocol.  I'm not even going to TRY to use the 3.5" floppy drive on it, where would I get media?

Jon

[Mangozac]

I'm not even going to TRY to use the 3.5" floppy drive on it, where would I get media?

I have seen flash drive -> floppy drive emulators so that could be an option if you don't get ethernet going.

[jmelson]

Arrgh!  I got the manuals today, but there's no schematic anywhere.  This thing has at least 25 boards and modules scattered all through the base, with mazes of cables running everywhere.  The "ready" button is not seen by the computer, while the other front panel buttons are seen.  I have no idea where the wires for the ready button go.  Usually, the maintenance manual has at least an overall schematic so you know what bundle of wires goes from one place to another.

Just venting, I guess!

Jon

[Mangozac]

That's upsetting! You could try reaching out to the spare parts suppliers in China and see if they have manuals?

[jmelson]

Well, it was a real BEAR to track the wires from the switch to the logic, but I finally did it.  So, the ready pushbutton goes to an interconnect board, then to another cable, then to the DPRAM board that is the interface between the PC computer and the VME computer.  I was able to see the switch signal go through an opto-coupler and then a Schmitt trigger chip and come out the other side as good TTL level signals and then it goes into a single chip micro.  So, I can't really track the signal into that.  Possibly that micro implements some kind of interlock with some other signal and is preventing the button push from getting through to the PC, which displays that the button is NOT being pushed.

This is pretty critical, without it, all the servo and stepper drives do not get powered on.

I've found some of these DPRAM boards on eBay for a reasonable price, but I have no idea if there is actually anything wrong with the board.

Jon

[jmelson]

OK, some new info.  In the I/O diagnostics page, there is an input to the computer labeled "power switch".  It is always indicating false.  It makes some sense that this would sense the condition of the "main start" contactor, as this powers up all the safety sensors (door switches, travel limit sensors, etc.), and prevent the ready button from powering up the servo amps until the power to the sensors is on.  So, I have asked somebody with a similar machine to confirm that is what the "power switch" input point is actually responding to.

If so, then I need to see why the contactor turning on does NOT show up at the computer.  Could be a wiring issue or an optocoupler that has gone bad.
And, I'm STILL waiting for the schematics...  GoPPM is having the manual scanned for me.

Jon

[Mangozac]

As I said earlier in the thread - I had a burner out auxiliary contact on my UP2000 printer's main power contactor, which prevented it from latching on upon power up. Contactors are cheap so given the age I would just swap it out anyway.

[jmelson]

As I said earlier in the thread - I had a burner out auxiliary contact on my UP2000 printer's main power contactor, which prevented it from latching on upon power up. Contactors are cheap so given the age I would just swap it out anyway.

CR #1 is a 5-pole contactor, and pretty compact as well.  So, I'd have to do some study to find a drop-in replacement.  Also, the power contacts SEEM to be working fine.  I saw something on one of the auxiliary contacts that looked a little odd, I didn't get exactly 0.00 V across it when it was supposed to be closed.
But, I don't know what is on those particular contacts.  I should be getting the schematics shortly, and hopefully all this wiring will start to make more sense once I understand what does what.

Jon

[jmelson]

Well, I now have the schematics, they are horrible, and don't exactly match my machine.  But, mostly they are close.  I only got machine wiring schematics, NONE of the board schematics.  Ugh, I was hoping for more detail.

I had an idea that the mysterious input point the computer shows as "power switch" might be used to interlock going to ready mode, but it is not hooked up to anything.  I was able to ground that optoisolator input, and the input display does show "power switch" going on, but it had no effect on anything else.
So, I guess that is a feature unused in this model.  DARN!

So, I'm still stuck with not being able to turn the servos on, which makes it pretty hard to do anything on the machine.  It COULD be a defect in the IO_DPRAM board, where all of this action appears to connect, but it could be a software issue.  Geez, you'd think there's be a diagnostic tree in the
maintenance manual, but no sign of such a thing.

Jon

[jmelson]

Well, a long wait to make any progress.  I ordered an IO_DPRAM board from Korea, but it never came, so I had to order another, at higher price from a different outfit.  This one came very quickly, I plugged it in, and the machine fired up
immediately!  A great relief!  I'm still waiting for some ball bearings to reload the head 3 ball spline to arrive, then I'll put head 3 back in and should have the machine fully operational.  I still have to come up with some way to mount my vibratory feeder on the feeder rails, and also make a set of support pins to hold the board up on the conveyor.
I've ordered some magnets to place on the backup plate, and have to make some spring-loaded pins to go on them.

So, progress at last.

Jon

[Mangozac]

Awesome! That's great to hear!

[jmelson]

And, the saga just keeps going on!  Arrghhh!

So, I replaced the IO_DPRAM board, and the machine goes to "ready", enabling servos and all the features of the software.  I rebuilt the 3rd head's ball spline, and got it all together again, put the top back on the machine and
put the video monitors back on.  Now, I see that the downward camera image is rolling sideways.  After checking a bunch of connectors, etc. with no change, I checked the video out of the camera by BNC, and then probed the camera cable.
I figured out the controller sends out sync and expects the camera to provide video synch'ed to that signal, but the camera is not synching to it.  I took the camera apart, it has a bunch of small boards in it with tiny connectors.  I reseated all the connectors and cycled all the switches, but it made no difference.  So, I had to order a replacement camera from the Philipines.

Maybe that will be the last breakdown?  I hope!

Jon

[SMdude]

Bugger!
At least at the end of it though you will have spent less money than a neoden 4 and have a much much better machine as well as know it inside out allowing you to quickly deal with breakdowns in the future if needed.

[jmelson]

Bugger!
At least at the end of it though you will have spent less money than a neoden 4 and have a much much better machine as well as know it inside out allowing you to quickly deal with breakdowns in the future if needed.

Well, I sure hope so.  The list of things that WERE working at first but then stopped is starting to scare me.  Some just required connectors to be reseated, but there are now two major modules that outright failed after initially working fine.

I do note a heck of a lot of pure tin connectors in this thing, which should have been gold on a $100K machine.
I can expect some issues with these connectors from time to time.

Jon

[jmelson]

Well, I got the camera in from the Philippines, and it worked and solved the problem.  So, I took it apart and was able to trace the open PCB trace that caused the original camera to not sync.  I put in a wire to bring the signal from the camera connector to a board-to-board connector, put it all together again and the old camera now works.  Too bad I had to spend $150 to buy a camera JUST to trace out a wire that had gone open, but now I do have a spare.

I spent the day tinkering with vision fiducial recognition, and made a bit of sense of the procedure.  Still a lot to learn before I can be placing parts.

Jon

[Mangozac]

If it's not too much to ask I'd love to see more photos of these parts you're working on. It's always good to see how things are done and compare with my new Kayo machine

[jmelson]

If it's not too much to ask I'd love to see more photos of these parts you're working on. It's always good to see how things are done and compare with my new Kayo machine

Do you mean photos of the boards I make?  There are a fair number of photos on pico-systems.com, just click on the web store link at top of the page.

So, I'm still learning about the machine.  A number of my older boards don't have traditional fiducials on them, I have been using mounting holes for fiducials, and that has worked fin on my older Philips machine.  The software on the Quad has an option for "polarity=black" fiducials, but just doesn't work worth a darn on the big holes (~ 3 mm ID).  The centroid it detected would be +/- over 1 mm off.  I tried to pick up the OD of the plated-through mounting hole (6mm) and that didn't register at all.  So, in desperation, I tried to pick up a connector PTH ID, and it worked fine.  The only issue is the connectors have a grid of holes, and depending on how accurately the conveyor and stops fix the board, it could maybe pick up the WRONG hole.
I will have to tinker with the options to make sure it either ID's the right hole or rejects the fiducial.  It has plenty of settings to do that.

I also tried a board with regular (positive or "white") fiducials, and it seemed to do really well with those.  So, the boards with those should be just fine.

Next step is to make up a dummy program that mounts one resistor onto double-sticky tape on a board, and see how well that all works.

Another option for the non-fiducial boards is to use the beam sensor (very old-school, basically a one-pixel camera that is dragged around by the head to locate fiducials and bad marks).  Not sure if you have to hand-edit the configuration file or you can select between vision and beam sensor with a GUI option.  I need to try this out next time I have the machine on.  My old Philips just had the beam sensor.

Jon

[Mangozac]

Do you mean photos of the boards I make?  There are a fair number of photos on pico-systems.com, just click on the web store link at top of the page.

I was referring to the parts of the machine you are working on, but it's good to see some examples of what you're making too

It's pretty standard for CMs in China to not even use specific fiducials - even the user manuals for our Kayo machines simply show using SMT component pads. Still, for the best automation through out entire process (including the automatic stencil printer) we're using proper 1mm round fiducials.

[jmelson]

I was referring to the parts of the machine you are working on, but it's good to see some examples of what you're making too

OK, I really don't have any pictures of the specific parts.  I had to replace a VME circuit board that is the interface between the VME conputer (68040) and the ordinary PC motherboard.  It also has the safety logic on it which was bad in some way.  Somebody replaced the entire head # 3 with one from an earlier version of the machine.  The old ones had standard 2-phase steppers, the new one has a 5-phase stepper.  So, the rotation stepper on that head didn't work at all.  I looked at the part numbers and immediately had a strong suspicion what was wrong.  But, changing the motor is quite a detailed operation.  in the process, i found out that somebody had really messed up the balll spline that transmits rotation while allowing the Z rod to move up and down.  They lost at least 20 balls out of it.  I've reloaded it, but it is still a little stiff.  Probably the plastic ball carrier has been damaged.

Then, the down camera would no longer sync to the vision system.  It turned out to be an open PCB trace inside the camera, but I could not access both sides of the board without desoldering a BUNCH of connections, so I ordered another camera.  I was able to ring out the connection on the new camera, and then patched the old one with a jumper wire.

It's pretty standard for CMs in China to not even use specific fiducials - even the user manuals for our Kayo machines simply show using SMT component pads. Still, for the best automation through out entire process (including the automatic stencil printer) we're using proper 1mm round fiducials.

Yes, for low-density stuff like 0805 passives and SOIC, the fixturing is usually repeatable enough to be fine.  But, I am going to be working my way up to 0.5 mm TQFP parts, so I have to get precise fiducial pickup working.  Those boards DO have good fiducials, though.
One advantage of the down camera is I can actually WATCH the fiducial capture and abort if it doesn't look good.  With the beam sensor, I just ahve to trust it.

You can't use SMT component pads becuase they will have solder paste on them.

Jon

[jmelson]

I'm making EXTREMELY slow progress, mostly because the manuals are ASTONISHINGLY awful!  I have figured out how to teach board coordinates and found that large mounting holes don't work for fiducials, but small holes do (the first board I'm trying doesn't have "real" fiducials.)

But, I don't want to teach the board.  So, now I've started trying to make ASCII import work.  I found it wants tabs for field separators, but without any guide I'm trying to construct a file to import.  One issue is the "placement origin".  I see in the manual how to specify "PF-1" and then the first fiducial location becomes the origin for the board.  But, I don't want to do that!  I want the origin of the board to be the lower left corner, and then the CAD system generates all the coordinates relative to that.  Does anybody know how to set it up like that?  Does anyone have a sample .qsa file they can share?

These files should be quite similar for Quad QSA-30, Samsung CP-30 and CP-40.  If you put Samsung in a search string, all you get is cell phone hits.

Thanks for any help anyone can offer,

Jon

[SMdude]

Have you looked at PCB Synergy? It converts placement files for many different machines.
I couldn't get it to do what I expected for my Juki, but I do need to spend more time with it as I can see that it should make life much easier than using the Juki program.

[SMTech]

Have you looked at PCB Synergy? It converts placement files for many different machines.
I couldn't get it to do what I expected for my Juki, but I do need to spend more time with it as I can see that it should make life much easier than using the Juki program.

I think this should be the answer, clearly quite a lot of work has gone into it. Arguably tho' it is designed very much inline with how one guys mind works and how he runs/ran would run an SMT line. For instance I've had a fiddle and its almost completely useless to me. I don't start with design files and I don't want a program that allocates parts to feeders. So what I use is Essemtecs built in tools, Libre Calc (for formatting mostly), SMT-Maestro and a centroid file, or if pushed a gerber-> centroid converter.