Recommend Pick n Place

[PartialDischarge]

Hi,

Have to purchase a PnP in the coming weeks, requirements are

- 0.4mm pitch minimum
- boards are small 100x100
- <500 boards month
- ease of use (no problems with software...)
- 220V power
- kicad compatibility
- >40 feeders, yamaha better

Any suggestions? My options are Kayo A4 ,Zhen Bang ZB 3245TSS, Qihe EM61 seems good but probably more than I want to spend.

[48X24X48X]

I owned a HW-T4-50F (known as GP400/SMT550 depending on which reseller you bought from) from HWGC for 4 months now. Like the machine a lot although software can be improved mostly on warning/error/prompt messages. Once you understand how to use the software, it's mostly routine stuff. Hardware is of high quality and very heavy. I used KiCad and I don't believe the importing of position files depend on what CAD software you used because it shouldn't be and that's what the software does quite well. I haven't try below 0.5 mm pitch components but I'm sure it can do 0.4 mm (advertised as 0.3 mm pitch capable). As a bonus, it also supports electric feeder if 0201 is your kinda thing. New version of the software was just released a week ago. Cool new feature like auto feeder pick up location and footprint library are added. For me, with that 2 additional feature, it's very complete for me already. I got mine for USD6K++ (exact price depends on your location as my price has slow boat shipping included to Malaysia) and not including the feeders (got a bunch of 8 mm,12 mm,16 mm and vibration feeder).

- boards are small 100x100
- <500 boards month

Similar kinda board sizes and quantity like me.

There are many threads already like this one, so I would suggest going through them.

[SMTech]

Yep go through the threads. Also this blog https://www.rocketscream.com/blog/2020/07/04/picking-the-right-or-wrong-pick-and-place-machine/ because they went out there to see machines in person, maybe they even have it by now...

0.4mm pitch with no linear encoders on a budget machine might be ever so slightly ambitious if you were after absolute consistency absolute ease of use software is less important if you are working with a small set of data/designs that doesn't change a great deal. Expect anything you choose to have software that is nothing other than functional - you can see a lot of that from Youtube.

[48X24X48X]

Yep go through the threads. Also this blog https://www.rocketscream.com/blog/2020/07/04/picking-the-right-or-wrong-pick-and-place-machine/ because they went out there to see machines in person, maybe they even have it by now...

0.4mm pitch with no linear encoders on a budget machine might be ever so slightly ambitious if you were after absolute consistency absolute ease of use software is less important if you are working with a small set of data/designs that doesn't change a great deal. Expect anything you choose to have software that is nothing other than functional - you can see a lot of that from Youtube.

I'm the author of that blog. 

[PartialDischarge]

I owned a HW-T4-50F (known as GP400/SMT550 depending on which reseller you bought from)

50 feeders, thats great.

[SMTech]

Yep go through the threads. Also this blog https://www.rocketscream.com/blog/2020/07/04/picking-the-right-or-wrong-pick-and-place-machine/ because they went out there to see machines in person, maybe they even have it by now...

0.4mm pitch with no linear encoders on a budget machine might be ever so slightly ambitious if you were after absolute consistency absolute ease of use software is less important if you are working with a small set of data/designs that doesn't change a great deal. Expect anything you choose to have software that is nothing other than functional - you can see a lot of that from Youtube.

I'm the author of that blog. 

Well there you go, I'm not sure many others have hopped on a plane and done that much work looking at these, everyone else asks some questions and then buys the one they thought they wanted in the first place. I'd suggest this makes you the authority for this particular set of reuirements

[Rat_Patrol]

If you run the same boards over and over, I have the Charmhigh 48VB.

The software is kind of really shitty, plan on checking over every component placement to make sure they are right. For some reason, it auto-rotates components in the builder, not sure why. It is usable, but just be prepared to go over it carefully to make everything right. Little things like vacuum detection and vision are tuned off by default, which is stupid.

The feeder system is good enough, but certainly not perfect. You do have to babysit the machine pretty much all the time. Usually what happens is the cover tape wasn't pulled back and so the nozzle can't pick up the component. The tighter you make the take-up reels, the more you run the risk of them being too tight and pulling out the component tape and wasting components and making a mess.

I run 150x200mm boards as a max, but only around 100 per month, and the same boards over and over, so it works for me. After I got it all dialed in (as far as the program), and learned the quirks, it is good enough for my needs at the moment. I do have my eye on a Neoden S1 as an upgrade though. That unit has more feeders, and feeders are traditional cartridge type (but proprietary I believe). That would allow easier swaps and far more reliable feeding, presumably. However, I'm looking at $25k USD for a full setup for the S1 where the 48VB cost me about $6000 landed. Oh the joys of a startup 

[Mangozac]

We received our Kayo 1706 6 months ago and are very pleased with it as a production machine doing 2k boards per month. I went and inspected their machines at an exhibition in Shenzhen prior to purchase and was very pleased with the build quality compared to some of the others I saw. Programming is very manual but once you develop an understanding of the best settings for different component types it gets quicker. I'm sure the A4 would be very similar but having only 4 heads would limit the speed considerably. If you end up with a different nozzle on each head (or can possibly get away with 3 different nozzles over 4 heads) I'd expect the placement speed will be down between 2-3k components/hour.

[48X24X48X]

If you run the same boards over and over, I have the Charmhigh 48VB.

The software is kind of really shitty, plan on checking over every component placement to make sure they are right. For some reason, it auto-rotates components in the builder, not sure why. It is usable, but just be prepared to go over it carefully to make everything right. Little things like vacuum detection and vision are tuned off by default, which is stupid.

The feeder system is good enough, but certainly not perfect. You do have to babysit the machine pretty much all the time. Usually what happens is the cover tape wasn't pulled back and so the nozzle can't pick up the component. The tighter you make the take-up reels, the more you run the risk of them being too tight and pulling out the component tape and wasting components and making a mess.

I run 150x200mm boards as a max, but only around 100 per month, and the same boards over and over, so it works for me. After I got it all dialed in (as far as the program), and learned the quirks, it is good enough for my needs at the moment. I do have my eye on a Neoden S1 as an upgrade though. That unit has more feeders, and feeders are traditional cartridge type (but proprietary I believe). That would allow easier swaps and far more reliable feeding, presumably. However, I'm looking at $25k USD for a full setup for the S1 where the 48VB cost me about $6000 landed. Oh the joys of a startup 

The S1 was already pulled out the market due to many issues and now resell as Tronstol A1.

[PartialDischarge]

This guy has the SMT550 and has some issues with the software,,,, but from this thread (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/manufacture/kayo-a4-pnp-machine-review/)  it seems to me that the Kayo A4 software is not perfect either 




From the comments:
If you are comfortable with a well built machine that has poor software and language barrier limited service from a sales organization that oem’s their software and system design from elsewhere in China, the YX is a good machine.

If I was buying it again, I would probably go with Kayo - they have their own software and provide first party support...

[48X24X48X]

John's issue are mostly with poor documentation on the software. Although I didn't experience any of the issues that he went through, but the software definitely can be a lot better with more accurate translation and more prompt and error message. He bought his machine from YX while I bought mine from Glichn. I got my support from both HWGC and Glichn. Probably that's makes the difference. I'll be testing the latest software after finishing the last batch of boards for 2020 and will put some effort documenting it on video and writing.

[Mangozac]

This guy has the SMT550 and has some issues with the software,,,, but from this thread (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/manufacture/kayo-a4-pnp-machine-review/)  it seems to me that the Kayo A4 software is not perfect either 

Frankly, at the price point of these machines something has to be lacking, and since the hardware is certainly solid on the Kayo machines it's the software that leaves a bit to be desired. The lack of component library is the biggest annoyance but we knew that going in and for the price trade-off this was acceptable. We've had no software bugs on the machine itself and any odd results were due to our own screw ups. We just ran 1k boards last week placing at about 4500 components/hr and the only time the machine beeped at us was when a reel ran out of parts.

By far the best thing about Kayo is the support. I can send a message in WhatsApp and will have a response within minutes in almost fluent English. We did find a bug in their offline programming software and it was fixed in no time.

[PartialDischarge]

The lack of component library is the biggest annoyance but we knew that going in and for the price trade-off this was acceptable.

By component library you mean footprint library? This the HW-T4-50F does have in the latest sw version as 48X mentioned
But pardon my ignorance, what is it needed for? I though Pnp just picked components and placed them at some x,y coordinates, why does a PnP care about the shape of a footprint?

[forrestc]

By component library you mean footprint library? This the HW-T4-50F does have in the latest sw version as 48X mentioned
But pardon my ignorance, what is it needed for? I though Pnp just picked components and placed them at some x,y coordinates, why does a PnP care about the shape of a footprint?

On my machine  (a manncorp branded Autotronik) , the library is used to simplify vision processing.  I.E. the machine picks a component and looks at it to determine if it's been picked at an odd angle or offset slightly, or so on.     This is all done with machine vision, and if you can tell the machine it's a 1206 resistor it can go and pull the vision files for a 1206 and use them, instead of having to re-learn the vision for each individual component, or even worse, for each component in each program.

I'm curious about what of that functionality is lacking here, seems like that would be a pain in a rear depending on exactly what isn't implemented.   

[Mangozac]

Well, in curious timing, Kayo have just today sent me a big software update for the 1706. This update includes what they are referring to as "component library" functionality. Essentially it allows you to configure the settings for a component and save it into a database as a footprint. Then, when setting up new projects in the future we will be able to simply link components to the library to recall the optimal settings.

Most importantly, this does include the vision settings for each part. The vision settings have been expanded with additional parameters (such as minimum area).

This is a really exciting development and it's great to see that they are still releasing improvements for their older machine designs.

[Mangozac]

By component library you mean footprint library? This the HW-T4-50F does have in the latest sw version as 48X mentioned
But pardon my ignorance, what is it needed for? I though Pnp just picked components and placed them at some x,y coordinates, why does a PnP care about the shape of a footprint?

For an explanation please see my above comment.

PnP is unfortunately much more complex than just some xy coordinates. Additional information settings for each footprint includes:
- Pick speed
- Place speed
- Movement speed
- Feeder actuation delays
- Pick height
- Place height
- Visioning settings
- Which nozzles/heads are compatible

Visioning is important because there is always tolerance with where the part is picked up. If you're trying to achieve high placement accuracy the machine needs to correct for this. Kayo machines also rely on their visioning to detect whether a part was actually picked up.

[SMTech]

By component library you mean footprint library? This the HW-T4-50F does have in the latest sw version as 48X mentioned
But pardon my ignorance, what is it needed for? I though Pnp just picked components and placed them at some x,y coordinates, why does a PnP care about the shape of a footprint?

For an explanation please see my above comment.

PnP is unfortunately much more complex than just some xy coordinates. Additional information settings for each footprint includes:
- Pick speed
- Place speed
- Movement speed
- Feeder actuation delays
- Pick height
- Place height
- Visioning settings
- Which nozzles/heads are compatible

Visioning is important because there is always tolerance with where the part is picked up. If you're trying to achieve high placement accuracy the machine needs to correct for this. Kayo machines also rely on their visioning to detect whether a part was actually picked up.

As you detail above that is a HUGE deal and the reason some of the chinese machine procedures look so incredibly faffy to set up. On the Essemtec there are effectively 3 interlinked tables - "Packages" which contains the size/pad information needed to pick and recognize a package and place it including placements/pick speeds/move types . Then you have your "components" which links a part number with a package and a "carrier" (tape/tube/tray) and its orientation in the carrier, one component can have multiple carriers attached to it.

This means you really can just about just import XYR data and place a board, providing the part numbers/packages are in the system already. In reality you're still going to need to fix a few things like XY data for oddly shaped things like DPAK or FPC connectors which are often complete crap in CAD data and rotations because standards, sadly are rarely followed.

Important to remember a footprint is just that, a footprint plenty of different shaped parts can share a footprint, a part that is taller than expected will slam into the board harder but also vision as a different size becuase it will be held closer to the camera.

[Styno]

On the Essemtec there are effectively 3 interlinked tables - "Packages" which contains the size/pad information needed to pick and recognize a package and place it including placements/pick speeds/move types . Then you have your "components" which links a part number with a package and a "carrier" (tape/tube/tray) and its orientation in the carrier, one component can have multiple carriers attached to it.

This means you really can just about just import XYR data and place a board, providing the part numbers/packages are in the system already. In reality you're still going to need to fix a few things like XY data for oddly shaped things like DPAK or FPC connectors which are often complete crap in CAD data and rotations because standards, sadly are rarely followed.

Our 20+ year old Dima works just like that as well.

There is only a 4th table in addition to the ‘packages’ containing basic footprint categories like ‘soic’, ‘plcc, ‘sot’ etc. with specific hardware vision profiles (probably because vision is quite crude on such old machines).