Tronstol E1 experience

[lamabrew]

Sort of surprised nobody else has talked about this yet. This was purchased for prototype and small (like a dozen or two boards) builds.  I use local contract assembly places for bigger builds.  I've already made some obvious mistakes (like sending a nozzle across the floor because I put it in the auto-changer holder wrong) and probably will make more as I figure out this machine, but hopefully some of my experience will help others.  Or others out there that have one of these - my understanding their aren't many of us yet - can offer assistance.

I've recently uncrated it and started to set it up. It arrived a day after I got access to new office space so things will change in the background too. There was also a 3 alarm fire that closed the building for a while (nobody hurt, my things were OK).


The unit was purchased from Neoden USA (New Jersey). Tronstrol and Neoden are now two different companies but there's some things that seem to share commonality between them. Neoden USA sells both. They offer support and factoring in shipping/tariffs made it kind of a no-brainer to buy from them if you're in the US. The unit is in the wooden crate, the big box was the stand, and the other box was a FP2636 stencil solder printer (frameless).


The E1 was securely bolted to the shipping crate, the tool kit includes a socket wrench and other tools needed to get it off the crate base and mounted to the stand.  It is a 2 person job to move/lift the unit.  Getting it set up mostly consists of removing packing materials and tie downs used for shipment.  The only assembly needed is to bolt it to the stand (which is optional) and screw in the status indicator light and plug it in.  Took about 2 hours.


It has a touch screen and a keyboard & mouse can be connected, but IMHO much easier to VNC in to it, as well as then you can move files directly to it (it's a RPi running Linux) instead of the USB stick.  It only has WiFi available.


The manual that came with it was out of date (OTOH they should get points for including a printed manual) but Neoden USA was able to supply me with the latest manual.  The machine comes with a test board but no noob-level directions on the steps needed to actually get parts on to it.  There's example files on the machine that are for other machines which is confusing.  In the end the way to get it working was to start with a blank file, import the pick and place .CSV (which you might want to trim/make a new version with just one component for initial tests), and then go through each step and get all of the settings right.  This is where the support from Neoden USA was great, as the manual isn't quite complete to explain what exactly the settings are doing and/or how to figure out what they should be.  A screen share resolved a lot of things.  Probably took about 8 hours from first power up to getting parts to place.

Here's the machine in action:https://youtu.be/AkTbvYJ7PnM

Placement seems to be off a bit for different areas.


Placing one part at a time, the UI shows where it thinks it wants to place it (red box) and you can see where the part ends up is off. I've adjust some of the speeds, delays and accuracy settings but doesn't seem to change what's happening.



There's some more things it can do for calibration and that's what I'll work on next and report back when there's progress.  After that there's things that are (so far) unclear about the "materials" and "footprints" libraries and how to incorporate those in to workflow where one bank of feeders/parts is going to be permanent in the machine.

[lamabrew]

Update in case someone else is hitting these things. It has V 1.01 software on it (April 2022) and I never trust version one of anything.  So far, with two exceptions, the bugs have been tolerable and shouldn't be show stoppers.

The minor bugs:

• CN40 nozzle tolerance needed to be increased. Or maybe the size is wrong?  Leads to head errors if not fixed.
• A head error can lock up the software
• Selecting a head pickup test with a nozzle that doesn't map to the selected footprint causes nothing to happen vs. a warning message.
• Bug(s) in swapping columns after .CSV pick and place file import. Possible weird "they don't stay swapped next time the board file is opened" bug. Suspect if I give the columns the exact names the software wants, and in the exact order, this probably goes away. OTOH since there's the ability to assign/swap columns, make it work so I don't have to muck with the .CSV?
• Yellow status on light doesn't work. Just green or red.

The "that's odd/hope they can improve this" :

• Forward compensation. It turned out to be the cause of parts ending up skewed (when placed) as a results of the pickup position drifting (see example).  (Though this does not solve the parts being shifted when placed, see below.)  Set to 0.5 now for the parts I was working with, otherwise the tape slowly drifts and the pick up goes badly.  What concerns me is this seems to be a global setting for all parts using a specific footprint, and I'm not convinced this is ideal, i.e. maybe some 0603 need more forward compensation but maybe not all?
  
  Semi-related is when changing a reel it's easy to disturb adjacent components, meaning rechecking the alignments.
  
  Seems to me a pin feed system, to be reliable and efficient for use, needs to auto align on the sprocket holes before every pickup.

Big problems:

• Have not figured out the offset between where the machine thinks its placing the part and where it ends up.  I suspect when reflowed the parts will pull back correctly, but the machine should be more accurate than what I see. See the example of an 0603 not where it thinks it is.  There was a suggestion to adjust the place height but have not been able to try that yet.
• Removing the feeder assembly (for example to put in a new reel, etc) when the system is powered up bricks the software when you unplug the peeler controller cable.  If you power up the machine without the peeler(s) plugged in the software will run again, and let you know it doesn't see the unplugged side.  But powering up with everything plugged in just causes the controller software to hang more or less when the app opens.  Log file shows something being retried but no info as to what it means.  This problem is now in Tronstol's hands to resolve.  It also raises questions about how to put more parts on the machine during a run.

[SMTech]

... Interesting.

As a non "Chinese PnP" user my input may not be valid but, what should be happening with picking a part such as your 0603 is, you define a pick offset for that feeder after loading based on where the pick position seems to be (center of pocket not device in pocket). Subsequent picks will adjust the offset based on the vision results to keep the pick consistent and correct for feeder inaccuracy. A global package based offset is not to correct an inaccurate pick position, its purpose would normally be to pick a package off-center because of its symmetry e.g a DPAK.

Correctly defining the height of a component has a significant effect on accuracy, it changes the perceived dimensions of the device to camera and also means the device might meet the board sooner (or later) than the defined height might suggest. Many machines will still be moving in XY while lowering the nozzle, unless its placement parameters define otherwise. I have noticed on the examples I have seen of chinese PnP that how they handle component & place height can be somewhat odd & long winded.

[PCBprototyping]

Hi,

First, clean the position feedback ruler with alcohol and microfiber cloth as it gets dirty easily and it causes drift or failed initialization problems. To clean it, turn off the machine, move the head to back manually, spray the cloth with alcohol and clean the ruler in one gentle wipe from front to back. Do this regularly, if you're in a dusty environment or whenever you get a precision problems.

Second, do the calibration in settings:
- leave mark points with each head and needle and center them. Double sided transparent adhesive tape, painted with whiteboard marker will give you best results. Use CN040 nozzle to get as small circle as possible.
- set the nozzle exchanger centers
- place TQFP100 with supplied demo project and change the DCAM rotation angle accordingly, so the TQFP100 will be in line with pads. If you reuse the same TQFP100, always clean it as any dust affects the recognition and dust sticks to double-sided tape easily. Be sure that pins are not bent upwards as they will make the component look bigger. Recognition frame should be right on pin edges, there shouldn't be any gap.


Now you're ready to place the demo project. Fill in the 0201(preferably) or 0402 feeders and go to EDIT/material. Select the 0201 feeder, that you want to place and follow these steps to set the pickup and drag location. Order is VERY important:
- pull the tape so the pocket to be picked would be as far as possible from the edge but it doesn't expose the next component.
- click needle and set the center of the tape hole. Watch the tape to see, if it will move and click feed. Click feed again just to be sure dragging is repeatable. Needle doesn't need to be in center anymore, it just needs to be at repeatable position of the hole. These steps are very important as they will allow the hole and needle to self adjust.
Now, when feeding is repeatable, switch to pick and set the center of the pocket.
Now you can switch back to needle, click feed, switch back to pick and check if next pick is still in the center of the pocket.
This procedure by selecting needle+feed first and pick second is very reliable as it self adjusts the tape. Otherwise you will always have some offset as needle diameter is smaller than the hole and it needs some travel, before needle starts to pull the tape.
- place 0201 components in circle and TQFP100 and check positions. If placement is ok, you know that machine is well calibrated and precise.

Create a new project and import CSV. Be sure to be precise with angle, fiducial and first component settings. Set the pick height to just touch the component(use picking test function) and set the pick vacuum delay to 0.1s. Set the place height to i.e. 0.5 mm and place vacuum delay to 0.1s. Set all the speeds to 10, so the machine will move slowly and you will be able to see, what it's doing. Place the project and check the results. If they are not ok, use a slow motion camera on your phone and record the nozzle during pick up and placement. Check if nozzle goes down to far, spring shouldn't squeeze by more than 0.5 mm. If heights are ok, you haven't setup the project properly, because sample project was placed correctly.
Whenever you have problems, set all the speeds to minimun and use a slow motion camera, it will help you a lot. In most of the cases it's a user problem, machine is very precise, it can place 0201 easily.
Check Tronstol's youtube videos as they are very useful for programming and setup:
https://www.youtube.com/@sharingaboutsmttechnologya3424

Hope this helps.

[lamabrew]

Correctly defining the height of a component has a significant effect on accuracy, it changes the perceived dimensions of the device to camera and also means the device might meet the board sooner (or later) than the defined height might suggest. Many machines will still be moving in XY while lowering the nozzle, unless its placement parameters define otherwise. I have noticed on the examples I have seen of chinese PnP that how they handle component & place height can be somewhat odd & long winded.

I've now played with heights but that doesn't seem to be affecting the placement position on the board. I've also added delay but one of my next tests will be to slow everything down with really large values and see what, if anything changes.

[lamabrew]

Appreciate all of the good info.

First, clean the position feedback ruler with alcohol and microfiber cloth as it gets dirty easily and it causes drift or failed initialization problems.

It's a brand new machine so I'm not thinking that it should need cleaning yet?  It's in a relatively low dust environment and I keep the dust cover over it when not in use. I would be surprised if it's been powered up/uncovered for more than 24 hours yet.

Second, do the calibration in settings:
- leave mark points with each head and needle and center them.

(edited) The manual says it's The value is the mechanical position for leaving mark, but not how to use it to test or align something.  There's a video that explains it: https://youtu.be/vv7JnulX5uc

- place TQFP100 with supplied demo project and change the DCAM rotation angle accordingly, so the TQFP100 will be in line with pads.

I don't think my kit came with that, but I'll go look again.  Doesn't a package like that get checked with the UCAM?  Though for the parts I'm working with for testing they're all set to 3DSensor for alignment method.  I'm not quite clear yet how the data from that and the DCAM work to get the part on the board.

Now you're ready to place the demo project. Fill in the 0201(preferably) or 0402 feeders and go to EDIT/material.

Maybe I shouldn't admit this, but smallest I have sitting around is 0603s.  I'll have some 0201 and 0402 soon.

This procedure by selecting needle+feed first and pick second is very reliable as it self adjusts the tape. Otherwise you will always have some offset as needle diameter is smaller than the hole and it needs some travel, before needle starts to pull the tape.

I was doing it Pick and then Needle order as that's the way they're presented in the dialog window.  I'll try it the other way.  What Forward and Back Compensation values do you use?

Whenever you have problems, set all the speeds to minimun and use a slow motion camera, it will help you a lot.

Ah, hadn't considered that my cell can do decent slow motion. That should definitely help me understand what's going on.

Check Tronstol's youtube videos as they are very useful for programming and setup:

I do need to go back through them again.  I tend to be more of a RTFM person than watching videos.

Hope this helps.

Huge help!  You've given me a lot of things to explore/understand about the E1.  I did talk to another E1 user before I bought it and I'm confident it will do what I need; I'm bouncing between the E1 and other things so my progress comes in spurts.  The Neoden USA folks have been very helpful too.

The distraction of having bricked the software has been an impediment.  For now leaving the right bank unplugged allows the machine to run.

[PCBprototyping]

Hi,

trust me, clean the ruler, it can get greasy even on new machine. This is first thing you should do.

To leave the marks, follow the video, it is good. Just use double sided sticky tape, that you used for test placement and paint it with black marker. It will give you better mark and contrast to find the center.

Sample PCB is the one you used for the test placement and made the photos(0201 to 0603 in circles, TQFP100). Already prepared project is on USB stick and in the projects.
UCAM is for fiducials and pocket centering, for ICs, it will use DCAM, as they don't fit the laser flying vision.

0603 are also ok for test placement, but you will see better the machine precision, if you use 0201. A reel of 500 pcs is cheap, buy one.

Needle first and pocket second is the way to go, it's logical, because needle has smaller diameter than the hole. The difference between them will make a pick offset, if you set pocket center first.
Use default back and forward compensation, they don't matter that much. They are just to go back with the needle after the drag, so needle doesn't rub the walls of the holes and lifts the tape.

The videos will help you a lot, they are very informative and you get the point much quicker, than reading the manual.

Just follow the steps I described first to confirm the machine is calibrated and setup correctly. After that you can play with it and slo-mo camera to see, how it works and what matters.

Machine is extremelly precise, when setup correctly, I'm sure you will be satisfied.

[PCBprototyping]

I noticed your youtube slow motion video, place height is too low, it compresses the nozzle spring too much. Change it for approx. 1 mm, it should compress the spring up to 0.5 mm.
If nozzle is compressed too much, it might rotate the component, it's not so noticeable with adhesive tape as it has a lot of friction, but with solder paste, rotation can happen easily.
Pick and drag settings are ok.
Disable the double pick in the setting(feed twice), if you don't need the speed, because first component might flip over during drag. This is especially noticeable with 0201 and 0402 components.
If you need the max speed, keep feed twice on and set the needle height, so that it doesn't swing the tape during drag and release.

[lamabrew]

Thank you for looking things over. Definitely owe you a beer or 3. (We have a lot of good beer here in the Boston area)

I noticed your youtube slow motion video,

Well you beat me to it    It was my first attempt at the slow-motion and figured I would make a better one next week.  For those that are interested here it is: https://youtu.be/nVvK6frwWqk

place height is too low, it compresses the nozzle spring too much. Change it for approx. 1 mm, it should compress the spring up to 0.5 mm.
If nozzle is compressed too much, it might rotate the component, it's not so noticeable with adhesive tape as it has a lot of friction, but with solder paste, rotation can happen easily.

I'll experiment with that next.

Disable the double pick in the setting(feed twice), if you don't need the speed, because first component might flip over during drag. This is especially noticeable with 0201 and 0402 components.

When I first saw that I was like "oh, I didn't even know it was doing that"; learned a lot watching it in slow motion.

I went back to the start and rechecked calibration/alignments on everything. I lost what the original Head 1 settings were, but for Head 2 changed Y by +0.07mm. Forward compensation worked best at 0.25. With the default 0.2 the tape slowly drifted (after a dozen+ picks) to the point where the pickup was pretty wonky/not well centered on the head. Though the needle still managed to drag the tape so I'm not sure why that didn't manage to recenter it.

After doing that I got good results with the test board in terms of the offset problem I was seeing. the picture of the whole parts ring taken with the macro lens has some perspective shift, the 2nd picture shows the improvement better.  I expect I can adjust further but going to wait until I have the 0402s to try since that will make it more obvious. I need to get the CN30 nozzle for 0201, at the moment nothing is planned that would use 0201s but can see it being helpful to check alignments with (maybe put some 0201 and 0402 pads on the panel margin pieces).

After finishing the test I updated to the Feb 14th version that I just received, from looking at the updates list I suspect many of the small issues have been cleaned up.

Tronstol decided the right side peeler controller has failed and NeodenUSA will send a replacement. I'll post back once everything is put back together.

[PCBprototyping]

You can use CN040 for 0201 test placement, it will pick it.

I never had to change the forward compensation and I tried it on multiple machines. Have you cleaned the ruler? Maybe drift is from position feedback.

It's good that you got the latest SW, a lot has been improved in 1 year.

[PCBprototyping]

I saw your youtube video for E1 pick error on feeder 01. Seems like the measurement is not within tolerance, maybe it just needs small change from i.e. 0.1 to 0.15, can you send a picture of head measurements during production(like photo attached)?

[lamabrew]

I saw your youtube video for [snip]

I've been putting up videos to share with Neoden USA support while I was working on a strange problem.  I wasn't thinking anyone else would notice them.  You can ignore them, here's what was going on:

I got the replacement driver board for the right side peelers.  It had failed when I unplugged it while the machine was powered on, and Tronstol thinks that's what killed it. It's not to bad to change out the board, they recently posted a video of the process.

Unfortunately the new board did not solve the problem, the system reports no feeder connected.  I'm waiting to hear back from them as to what to do next, I assume it will be to replace whatever board is in the base part that connects to the peeler control board.

I had intended to see how things worked from the right side, etc.  Set that aside and put in a reel of 0201 and 0402 in the left bank's last two positions 26 & 27.

Pretty much nothing worked right either feeding or picking.  Finally realized the pickup head was mashing hard in to the parts, and the needle was doing the same, pushing the tape all the way down and sending parts flying, etc.  I could adjust the pick height, but needle height isn't a thing you can change per part.

Feeder assembly was securely clamped down and sitting correctly in the machine.

I'll spare the details but I finally noticed that while feeder assembly was all true and square, the pick area wasn't, it had a definite tilt to it.  Pulled the feed assembly out and looked more closely. Definitely tilted, which would explain all of the problems with the end 26/27 positions but why the first few acted Ok. (first two pictures).




But the assembly would not sit on the dovetail, even after loosening the screws.  Loosened the screws all the way, lifted off the upper assembly, and found the 'spare' screw just sitting there.


Removed that, put things back together, redid all the alignments, and all the feeders seem to be behaving.

Ran the test board with all resistor sizes and seemed to do OK.  Probably some more tweaking could dial in the 0201 parts a bit better but for now 0603 are the smallest sized parts (some 0.4 pitch QFNs for smallest pitch).  The place heights still need some work, the defaults definitely push down too hard.  If you bring up the place height adjustment in Materials the head is moved off the board.  I need to RTFM to figure that out, for now I just bumped up the board height a mm.

[lamabrew]

Should have added that the new software has an option to autoalign the pick position. Get the needle aligned first, get the pick close to where it should be, and hit the autoalign. If you don't get close on the pick position it might not pick the one you would expect, i.e. it will be too close to the left side to actually pick up the part. Maybe the top cover tape can be in the way just a bit, or the part isn't totally clear of the left side bracket.

Cuts the time in half to get the part lined up.  I'm hoping they do the same in a future release for needle position.

[lamabrew]

coming up on a week since the last update.  Some minor progress but a lot more unanswered questions:

1) failed right bank feeder (peeler).  New driver board didn't solve it.  Swapped left/right just to confirm the problem is not the peeler driver board but inside of the machine itself.  Waiting for confirmation that a new board of some sort is on its way.

Having to shut down the machine to remove the feeder bank to swap out a reel during a run is IMHO a big PITA.  Definitely lose a star or two in my review for that design decision.  Though I don't expect it to happen too often IRL as not expecting to do big runs.

It is not clear yet how to get back to where things were in a run when you need to shut down the machine.  An experiment for another day.

2) Can't find a way to export library info (material, footprints) to a spreadsheet.  Really need to be able to manipulate this data outside of the machine.  Likewise doesn't seem to be a way to import - longer term I was thinking of some scripts that could maintain/error check this info for when things are added/deleted.

This seems like a fundamental need so maybe I've missed something.

3) Doesn't seem possible to sort the display order of anything.  I would expect to click on a column header and give options for ascending or descending sort. Makes cross checking with other systems painful.  OTOH if there was a way to export to excel this wouldn't as painful.

4) Can't find a way to adjust DCAM/can't place any electrolytic caps because the camera can't see the part.

There's zero information on how to pick a part, have it presented to the DCAM, and then adjust things so it can figure out the part orientation.  See example.

5) Can't find a usable way to adjust a component's placement height other than making a slo-mo video of a part being placed, adjust, and repeat.  The Place adjustment mode just moves the head off the work area.  Need it to pick up a component and then go to the location it is to be placed and then allow adjustment while watching how much the head spring is getting compressed.

Another one of those basic things that makes me think I've missed something.

6) In the File->Material is a "synchronize" button that provides two options.  It is not explained what they do. It seems like "Synchronize to library" overwrites ALL components, not just the one that you're working on.  But maybe something else caused that.  OTOH "Synchronize from library" definitely doesn't do anything (that I could see from changing the component in the library, going back to the File, and selecting the option, and the change does not show).

7) Big status light on the top of the machine doesn't show yellow (from test mode).  Not a big deal, but given a major assembly error with the feeder bank somehow made it out the door, along with the blown peeler interface, every little "not working thing" makes me nervous that I have a lemon.

[PCBprototyping]

1) feeder bank: Normally, you can unplug it and plug it back and it will work. No need to shutdown the machine.

Resuming the project: Remember the ID of last placed component before you turn off the machine and go to this position the next day and select launch(scroll the table to the right). It will start from this component.

2) Library export: go to library and click export at bottom left corner. It will export it to SQL db file. Use DBbrowser to open the file, switch tab from database structure to browse data and select the desired table from the dropdown list. Go to file/export to export the table to excel
To import it, select update in the same bottom left corner of library tab.

3) Sort: not possible at the moment. Only sort available is in the edit/component/advanced/sort, where it will optimize the placement order by nozzle type.

4) Camera can see the part, but there is a dust in the corner(see the photo attached - red circle), which algorithm recognized as component, so it extended the frame to that dot. Dim your office lights and be sure no direct sunlight shines on the camera area and test again. If no difference, change the recognition algorithm in library/footprint/alignment method/modify camera from treshold to foerstner or vice versa. If no success, go to setting/system options and reduce the ROI to a bit(for 100 i.e.) until the camera recgnition area is not touching the dust(you can check the ROI size in tools/DCAM/DCAM test/algorithm/roi/test). This will reduce the recognition area, but will still fit 26x26 mm components.

Parts need to be in the tray or tape in the right direction, camera itself won't recognize the orientation, only the rotation and center of component. 0° angle means that pin 1 side is on the left for ICs and passives are horizontal with pin 1 on the left. This is defined by EIA 481 standard, general rule is pin 1 is the closest pin to the tape hole and pin 1 side of the IC is on the left of the tray.

5) Placement height: Define the right PCB thickness, which will affect the placing height. Generally, you don't need to change placing height(keep it at 0) as it will automatically take into account the component height. 0 will compress the spring for about 1 mm, if you need less compression, change place height to 0.5 i.e. manually, no need to use place height function.
This video is for big capacitor placement, you can see, that it recognizes it well and they don't change the place height. If 0 would mean PCB surface, it would slam the capacitor to the board, but it doesn't as it takes into account the component height from the library.



6) Synchronize to library will write all current project parameters to library and synchronize from library will update the current project parameters. I tried it with changing the accuracy and it works for me. Use synchronize whenever you make some major changes to specific component, so it keeps this value the next time you import a new csv.

7) Not sure about the status light, maybe the crimp contact is not fully inserted into the connector.

[lamabrew]

Thank you again for the help!

1) feeder bank: Normally, you can unplug it and plug it back and it will work. No need to shutdown the machine.

I'm just repeating what Tronstol told me: The electronics failed because I unplugged the peeler cable while the machine was powered on.  Given ongoing time/effort to sort this one out I will always shut the machine off until they say they fixed whatever caused this.  OTOH interesting that you never smoked a system doing that.

2) Library export: go to library and click export at bottom left corner. It will export it to SQL db file. Use DBbrowser to open the file, switch tab from database structure to browse data and select the desired table from the dropdown list. Go to file/export to export the table to excel
To import it, select update in the same bottom left corner of library tab.

In hindsight I should have tried that, just didn't occur to me it was a SQL file (the manual doesn't offer any explanation).

[snip] If no success, go to setting/system options and reduce the ROI to a bit(for 100 i.e.)

Since it's not documented:  do you know what are the units and/or is there a way to see what the ROI is as some sort of overlay perhaps?

5) Placement height: Define the right PCB thickness, which will affect the placing height.

I had some parts that were getting pushed down hard enough to flex the board.  I'm not sure why as the footprint info seemed correct.  It seemed to be picking them fine and I assumed it did the same set of calcs.  And yet it seemed to be off until I set the board height 2x it's actual thickness.

There's no documentation on how the machine does its calculations. If you pull up the pick height knob it goes to the part being picked. I would have expected that the knob to set the place height for the component would actually do it with a component at the proper location on the PCB. Otherwise seems to be no point in having that adjustment exposed the way they did.

6) Synchronize to library will write all current project parameters to library

To make sure I'm clear on this:  Synchronize to the library overwrites EVERY component, not just the one currently being edited?

and synchronize from library will update the current project parameters. I tried it with changing the accuracy and it works for me. Use synchronize whenever you make some major changes to specific component, so it keeps this value the next time you import a new csv.

I changed the pick location assignment in the library, did the synchronize from the library, and the component didn't change.

7) Not sure about the status light, maybe the crimp contact is not fully inserted into the connector.

I've monkeyed around with it and the connector on the light's pigtail seems OK. Given you indicated it should work, maybe it's disconnected inside the machine.

I'll try out the your ideas tomorrow and see what happens.

[PCBprototyping]

1) ROI: check the ROI size in tools/DCAM/DCAM test/algorithm/roi/test. It will create red circle, the circle should be smaller than the dust area. If it's not, change the diameter in system settings(600 is typical size, reduce it by 50, units are pixels, I believe).

2) resuming the project next day: I checked, it will save the current state, if you stop the placement and ask you the next time you enter the work mode, if you would like to resume.

3) Synchronize: yes, it will synchronize all components. I works for me in both directions.

[lamabrew]

3) Synchronize: yes, it will synchronize all components. I works for me in both directions.

That seems like a really bad idea in both directions:

• current project -> Library: I might have temporarily changed something as a test and not set it back/forgot I changed it.
  
• Library -> current project: any custom tweaks for a specific board (like maybe a footprint error in that rev) will get clobbered when some other part is updated. Unless you remember to make the change manually in the Library and the project.

If it was going to overwrite (either direction) I would expect an ECO-like list to show each entry/parameter that's different and ask me to OK it. Kind of like going back and forth between schematic and layout during design.

I get that the software is what it is, but I'm trying to understand Why it is the way it is, particularly when it seems be opposite of what I would expect/my preconceived notions.

Or stated a bit differently, to me this seem like a bug. 

[PCBprototyping]

Synchronizing to and from library is useful as sometimes, when you change i.e. pick location in project, you want it to be system wide available, not just in the project. If you don't update it to library, you will need to change this pick loaction each time, you import new csv.

[lamabrew]

I definitely want to be able to update to/from the library as the alternative is manually changing both places, it's the "all components without warning/verification" that worries me.

[lamabrew]

Made some progress on the DCAM and the 'lytic caps, which I will update on later. For the initial testing I was always using the left end of the strip. Now I see that pickup fails as you move down the strip. So far I don't see why.

I've tried the 3 bigger nozzles, the 400 seemed to produce the best results so far.

Here's some successes:

https://youtu.be/Q0hl0r0Ho40

https://youtu.be/5GcOR1buxBQ

and some fails:

https://youtu.be/VXKMT3NtWOM

https://youtu.be/O02bLGjrijg

Generally it always seems to work on the left end of the strip and fails more often (like 50%) on the right end.

[PCBprototyping]

Seems nozzle and capacitor are not parallel or pick location is slightly off center and nozzle sucks some air. Try to set the pick location for  the right side of the tape, this will eliminate the pick center problem. SW does not recalculate the angle of the tape, so you need to be aligned with the axis and if you're not, pick location is not perfect, which becomes important with the nozzle size almost the same as component size.
If readjusting the pick center does not help, place the magnetic PCB holder on this exact location and put the capacitor on it. If it picks it up now, tape is the problem as it's lower on the left side. If magnetic support did not help, lower the head with this nozzle down to magnetic holder and check if it's parallel with the holder.
You can also use smaller nozzle and rubber cap to increase the vacuum and compensate the non-parallelness. Not good solution for fine pitch ICs as component won't be parallel on camera, but capacitor should be fine.

[lamabrew]

Thanks, I'll try those things tomorrow.  I did go along the tape and checked the "anchor" position (from the File->Material dialog) and it seemed to stay centered. 

Going through the manual again, I think maybe I understand how you're supposed to pick up a component and have it hold it over the DCAM.  If I'm reading this right I need to position the UCAM manually and then do the DCAM part.  I did try with the UCAM over a part but selected from the File->Component, I think the doc is saying it only can  be done from Tools->UCAM test?  The images here were done with a screen capture during the few seconds that the software displays the DCAM image.

DCAM and placing the 'lytics:
Limited/unreliable success is what I would my current state.  I did clean the DCAM glass as well as reduced ROI radius by 100, though I think I misread your directions on getting the visual representation so will try that again tomorrow.

What I do see is the DCAM and head don't seem to be centered. I'm basing it on this capture, which I assume the red mark should be centered?


I didn't try changing things yet as I wanted to go back through the manual to see if there's clear directions about how this is supposed to be set - and I did not find a description. 

The fact that when it could place the cap it did it in the right spot makes me think the machine is aligned correctly and the red hatch is for something else - the ROI X and Y are not 0 and maybe that's what the red hatch is? I did not change the ROI X,Y from what the machine came with.

There are pictures attached of both success and fails for the DCAM.  I'm pretty sure the little smudge that it sometimes locks on to on the right is the needle, though I'm not sure why sometimes it's more obvious than others.  The smudge only appears when the head is over the DCAM so that's why  I think it's the needle versus a reflection.  Turning off all the lights and putting a blanket over the machine seemed to darken it but that's not going to be practical for running the machine.

Tomorrow I'm going to take a black sharpie to the needle and see what happens.

The other problem I had was even when it got the bounding rectangle correct it would still fail a  pick test (i.e. red box).  I finally realized the bounding box isn't coming up square because the algorithm is using the pins to define the sides instead of the actual sides of the little plastic carrier.  I bumped up the size to accommodate that.

The pins can have some slop to them and I've seen the bounding box come up angled as a result.

While I'm closer than yesterday, it's not usable yet.  Hopefully tomorrow some of things I came up with to try will yield positive results.

On the failed feeder/peeler interface: DHL shows the replacement board is on its way.

[MR]

Hi,

I'm just curious can you take some more photos of the pick and place head? I'd be interested to see what modules they use.

- Venturi Module?
- Pneumatic Valve?

- How thick are the pneumatic pipes?

[lamabrew]

I'm just curious can you take some more photos of the pick and place head? I'd be interested to see what modules they use.

Not sure you can tell a lot from the pictures. Eyeballing it the OD of the tubing looks like 5mm.

[lamabrew]

Now I see that pickup fails as you move down the strip. So far I don't see why.

Two things:

• double sided tape I was using wasn't sticky enough to firmly hold the strip in place.
  
• first and last part wells in the tape were a little twisted due to #1 above.

Redid and picking seems reliable.  I also have ordered the 220 size nozzle (wasn't in the kit I got) as 400 is a bit big.  Calling this one solved.

[lamabrew]

... how you're supposed to pick up a component and have it hold it over the DCAM.

My guess/observations for the procedure for using trays/cut tape sitting in the work area:

• Open Tools->UCam Test
  
• hit Ucam->Open button.  Ucam light should turn on
• Bump the slider to get it to take a new picture of where the head actually is.
• Move the head to center the crosshair over the part you want to use with the DCAM
• Hit "Confirm Position" button.  (nothing will appear to happen)
• Go to Tools->DCam Test
• Adjust "Chip Thickness" to match the part thickness (TBD, this appears semi-functional). Click some other box (not convinced Enter always works) to get it to take the value.
• Hit the Move to DCAM button. Machine will pick up part, but it's going to seriously mash the head down as there's no place to tell it how thick the tray is and it doesn't view this as a component so it can't use the adjusted "pick height" to know how low the head is supposed to go. (and this leads to more problems)
• head should end up over the DCAM
• Hit the down button to have the part moved into the normal scanning position for DCAM (well, no, it doesn't...)
• If you select ROI and hit Algorithm Test it will flash a red circle to show you where it's going to look for the part.  Don't blink or you'll miss it.
• Select the algorithm you wish to test and hit the Algorithm test button
• Wait a second or two
• A bounding box will briefly show in the DCAM display window.  Repeat as needed.
• Without changing anything I found the Threshold Algorithm failed 4 out 5 times, and the Foestner about 1 out of 10
• There are no knobs that I can find to change the imaging results
• There will be some illegible text displayed in the upper left corner of the image window.  Maybe it's supposed to be helpful?
• You can adjust the "chip thickness" (do an up/down after) to change the height that it goes to for the DCAM test, this seems to be the only thing you can control and does make a difference; I could get 100% fails going too low or too high
• Unfortunately the height is a global thing (Changed in Settings -> System Options) so if you find different parts need different heights I think you're screwed
• When you hit any other menu/whatever, the head is going to drop the part into the camera.  I put a piece of paper there to catch it.  Seems like a bug.

Also noted:

• The Rotation Test button moves the head from side to side and does some Algorithm Test. Some number is displayed when it finishes. I believe you should use that number the next time you play the lottery.
• There is a button labeled Save Image.  If it has a purpose, it is unknowable.
• There is a very faint cross hair in the image.  It is not centered on anything but this doesn't seem to affect things.  Purpose of this cross hair is unknown.

The problem is the height you work out here is NOT the height it will hold the part at over the DCAM when you are in File-> Materials.  I think that's because there it's maybe factoring the pick height (which is non-zero to account for the tray/holder thickness) into it's calcs?  Observing where it holds the part it's clearly different than where it did it in the DCAM Test even though the component height was set to match the component height associated with the footprint.

I'm still trying to find a value for Settings-> System Options -> Shooting Height that will work reliably with this particular 'lytic cap.  Right now it seems like it might be possible to get it to work for one part, but then if that setting doesn't work for other parts you're SOL?  Given the E1 feeder system can't handle tall parts IMHO it's kind of critical that "tray mode" be easy to set up and adjust for each part to achieve reliable operation.  Will continue to poke at this in hopes of discovering whatever secret(s) are needed.

[MR]

thank you for the pictures


https://www.eevblog.com/forum/manufacture/tronstol-e1-experience/?action=dlattach;attach=1741112;image

double check that picture it seems like if the motor is almost disconnected or half way connected... push in the motor connector.

[PCBprototyping]

The picture resolution is too low, I can't see the red hatch, can you repost it?

Smudge is from the light coming through the nozzles, try different recognition algorithm, maybe it will ignore it.
Light reflection can also come from some dust on 3D printed camera walls, I already had this problem and it disappeared after I removed this dust with tweezers. Covering the area above and on sides of the laser by hand will help you pinpoint where it's coming from.

For pneumatics on the head, it uses integrated vacuum pump and there's also pressure sensor connected to this line. You can see it's values in manual mode/head.

[lamabrew]

The picture resolution is too low, I can't see the red hatch, can you repost it?

I assume this is the one you had the problem with?  It's 2kx1,5k, and the red hatch shows up well for me in the browser.  Maybe open the link and save it locally?
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/manufacture/tronstol-e1-experience/?action=dlattach;attach=1740233;image

Smudge is from the light coming through the nozzles, try different recognition algorithm, maybe it will ignore it.

By using a pair of tweezers as a pointer I know the ghost in the image is from something about half way between the two heads on the bottom of the plate ( I was way off in guessing it was the needle).  It's probably way out of focus, but whatever it is it didn't come off when I wiped the area.
 
The Forstner algorithm seems to ignore it, but it gets confused by the feet the of the 'lytic cap as they protrude a bit from the plastic foot part of the cap.

I didn't have enough time today to record screen video of the machine trying to pick the cap, I think that is the only way to see it failing vs. trying to describe in words.

I did get to try a small SMT connector and the DCAM seemed to do the right thing - for the rare times the head didn't send the part flying across the room as there's no way to adjust anything in the DCAM test and none of my current nozzles did a good job holding on (I have ordered some different ones).  The body of that connector is tan so the algorithm probably had solid data and didn't get confused by the odd bits hanging off the connector body.

DHL says I'll have the new board tomorrow so getting the 2nd peeler bank working will be the first thing I look at.

[lamabrew]

Did some screen records of DCAM/picking fails and success.

There's 3, the descriptions say what they are.  Summary: caps = fail, connectors = success.

https://youtu.be/5tkmggaozKM

https://youtu.be/clEA1emHqoE

https://youtu.be/eIORyl_S02M

I tried the caps with the 3D sensor; the caps are a little bigger than the 6mm size in the manual but figured was worth a shot.  It seems to not be able to figure out their orientation, always places them skewed.

Passed the info back to NeodenUSA to sort out with Tronstol.  Next up is ripping out the guts to replace the controller board to hopefully solve the right bank feeder/peeler failure.

[lamabrew]

Replacing the controller board solved the busted right side peeler.  Here's a quick video of both sides working:
https://youtu.be/67KOM9j_EfM

Lots of cables in to the main board so it's not a fast thing to take it out and replace. Might have hoped for a simple big header and cable harness but I guess not at this price point.  I added some labels so I wouldn't make an oops.

With that taken care of it's back to trying to find a way to place SMT electrolytics.

[lamabrew]

SMT cap problem solved!

Experimenting with a 2nd cap made it more and more obvious that the ghost reflection was causing all sorts of problems in the system trying to figure out the cap's footprint.  Add a piece of electrical tape under the head between the two nozzle holes to kill the reflection and it seems happy. Though the Forstner algorithm still gets confused so probably stick with just Threshold for now.

Also was able to get some better contrast on the original SMT cap by raising the scan height.  This is not something that has a per part setting, as well as the height in the DCAM test is not the same that it uses in operation (haven't tried to figure that one out yet).  Need to do some more tests of actual pick and place; software crashed during testing...

Here's some screen captures showing the things tried to get to something that seems to work.

https://youtu.be/z08bReq2TwI   4.3x4.3 cap with ROI set to 300, which avoids the ghost reflection on the right side. Locates OK.

https://youtu.be/QpEZArYg1Eo 4.3x4.3 cap with ROI set to 500, ghost reflection on the right side breaks edge search

https://youtu.be/xShbzenNCQk 6x6 cap with ROI set to 300, ghost reflection on the right side ignored and edge search works

https://youtu.be/KL-jun1nOKs 6x6 cap with ROI set to 500 and a piece of black electrical tape added under the head (between the two nozzle holes) removes the ghost reflection; edge search works

https://youtu.be/LjMB7v1t9vk 4.3x4.3 cap with ROI set to 500 and a piece of black electrical tape added under the head (between the two nozzle holes) removes the ghost reflection; edge search in Threshold mode works, Forstner fail

[PCBprototyping]

Scan height can be changed per part by changing the component height. Usually, this is not necessary, but if you need to, you can do it that way, as shooting height(scan height) is calculated with this value and you can trick the machine to go lower/higher.

I think you should try to find the dust that reflects the light and affects the recognition, adding electrical tape is ok, but this is just a coverup, not removing the root cause. Since you cleaned the lenses, I believe it's on the walls surrounding the camera, which are 3D printed and it's rough surface can catch some dust. Happened to me before and I was able to remove it with tweezers.

From what I experienced, red cross being outside of camera center does not affect anything. I'll test some more and let you know.

Instead of DCAM in tools, I mostly use edit/material/pick test to check the dimensions and recognition of components, it will also use the speed settings, so your components don't fly away because of fast movements.
The recognition window always shows the width/length measurements, so you can adjust them accordingly. However, after the recognition, window is cleared, so use the phone camera to see, how the recogniton looked like. After some time, you'll get a filling, what settings are good.

I should mention, that for laser recognition, scanning height is very important for ICs and small electrolitics i.e. For ICs set it to TOP=0.2, so laser doesn't hit the pins and for electrolytics, set it to Bottom=0.2, so laser hits the black plastic part as top is round and laser cannot figure out the rotation, only the center. Max size of components for laser is around 10 mm, it will be less, if component is not picked in center.

[lamabrew]

Scan height can be changed per part by changing the component height. Usually, this is not necessary, but if you need to, you can do it that way, as shooting height(scan height) is calculated with this value and you can trick the machine to go lower/higher.

If I change the component height that's going to throw off the pick and place heights? Or do you mean change the component height to get the shoot height to be better and then change those other two to compensate for the fudged component height?

I think you should try to find the dust that reflects the light and affects the recognition, adding electrical tape is ok, but this is just a coverup, not removing the root cause. Since you cleaned the lenses, I believe it's on the walls surrounding the camera, which are 3D printed and it's rough surface can catch some dust. Happened to me before and I was able to remove it with tweezers.

The reflection is from the head assembly, covering the reflection area with tape making it go away IMHO pretty much leaves no other possibility.  I ran some more experiments, see next post.

I should mention, that for laser recognition, scanning height is very important for ICs and small electrolitics i.e. For ICs set it to TOP=0.2, so laser doesn't hit the pins and for electrolytics, set it to Bottom=0.2, so laser hits the black plastic part as top is round and laser cannot figure out the rotation, only the center. Max size of components for laser is around 10 mm, it will be less, if component is not picked in center.

Manual says 6mm max for the scanner. I did try the 'lytics previously that way and it failed, but perhaps the height was not right.  Regardless I would expect DCAM to work on the caps.

[lamabrew]

I was too optimistic last week, as well as I didn't really think through that I paid for a machine with two heads and taping one off really isn't solving things...I am baffled as to what exactly is causing these reflections.  I could work around it on the caps by setting a small ROI, but that will then break placing larger parts. To me the edge detect algorithm is buggy; even when it does correctly find the edge the feet of the cap protruding a bit cause some small errors in orientation.  Not enough that placement will fail for the cap, but for a fine pitch part it would be off. OTOH those wouldn't have protudy thingees.

If I hold a screwdriver up by the head you can't see it with the DCAM, very little light makes it up there for the way the lighting and camera is set up.  But if I illuminate it with a flashlight you can clearly see the thing that you might think makes the ghost - except if you actually line up the two pictures of the ghosty and the one with the light there's nothing in the right spot. (as an aside, blown up to this size I can read the numbers it computed, but they're not really readable at normal size).

It's clearly something on the head as the pictures with the electrical tape added back shows no problem and the two heads show different reflections. 

The ghost using head 2 is not in the same position as the ghost when using head 1. It does break edge detect. Screen video here: https://youtu.be/zIeSHx1stqM

I can't figure out why Tronstol doesn't see this same problem.  Is there some mechanical difference between my machine and the one they have?  Some software difference?

DCAM photos are in the attached PDF (Forum tools seem too awkward to insert/label screen captures like this.)  I also tried with all lights off and it makes no difference, the DCAM light or something in the head is the source of the ghosty.

[PCBprototyping]

For the head 2 in pdf, reflection is kinda red and it alignes with thin line sticking out of the corner, seems like it's FR4 fibre that's left from the cutting(see photo).
But I can't see anything for the head 1.

Cap recognition is good enough for the placement, there might be some offset as cap pins are typically not very straight and plastic foot can be a bit loose, so recognition frame is not always the same.
Chip recognition is very good from my experience. You can get some misplacement because of some dust on pins if you reuse the IC from the tray(double sided tape makes pins even more sticky) and if pins are bent, so the camera makes bigger frame. Upload a photo of TQFP recognition so I could see if it's ok and in focus.

[MR]

To me the illumination of that part doesn't seem to be right, yes you can get those effects if you put the light the wrong angle.
Try to go there with a torch and add some light in a different angle, maybe add a diffuser (eg. milky acrylic around the leds after the torch experiment).
You need to get a clear picture of the pads via the camera.

I also had optical recognition issues with my Mechatronika machine back then, but those assholes refused to fix those issues. After I wrote my own PP application for that machine I clearly noticed that optical recognition is a hot topic that has to be worked out with the customer if needed, even now I still have to update and enhance my algorithms and detection strategies from time to time. Some components seem to have a very unique production technology which makes nearly every component look unique to the camera.

However your issue seems to be illumination related. You need to get a clear pattern to the camera eye, some weak lines are not enough and you will fall into those 0.1% of customers who might run into such an issue.

Your part should look close to the attached picture (I just modified your picture with Gimp) that's what the optical recognition is looking for.

[SMTech]

Lower end machines seem to have very basic component lighting, if you look at more expensive machines the camera is set back and a "tunnel" of LED's in the camera housing illuminate the image, which tiers of that tunnel illuminate and to what intensity can be adjust to suit the package shape and color you are trying to image. If you have a simple &/diffused light source, you don't have that control and you may simply have to accept that some packages image inconsistently needing very wide acceptable parameters or have high reject rates. As MR show in his doctored image, there's way too much going on in your images, arguably the machine should not even be trying to look at most of those areas or for the shapes that appear there, but then that depends a little on how the machine interprets the camera data and what it measures.  Our previous (low end) machine, did crude edge detection to come up with an XY dimension and have a rough stab at rotation, our Essemtec by contrast can identify feet on legs, BGA balls and package bodies and use all that data to correct alignment and reject for damage (e.g missing balls or bent legs) or rotation outside acceptable limits. It's way better than the cheap method but there are still improvements that could be made, and they could include camera lighting and algorithms, perfect imaging takes a lot of work and sometimes a bit of trial and error to find the parameters that are best.

[lamabrew]

Try to go there with a torch and add some light in a different angle, maybe add a diffuser (eg. milky acrylic around the leds after the torch experiment).
You need to get a clear picture of the pads via the camera.

There's no obvious way to modify the camera/lighting design, it's more or less one large assembly.  My problem seems to be related to some sort of reflection from something in the head - when I tape off the hole(s) things seem to work. Taping off pick head #2 isn't my first choice, I would like to find a better way to solve the reflection problem.  Tronstol has given me two suggestions to try - though I still can't figure out why this seems to be an issue that nobody else seems to have.

It has been suggested by the US distrib that I try and get it just to see the pads vs. the body of the cap.  For me that seems even more daunting than trying to kill the reflection as there's no guidance on how that might be done.  Also I think that until I kill the reflection the edge detection software - in its current state - is going to continue to be confused.

My backup plan is to just cut the ROI down.  If I have a board with small and large parts that need to use the DCAM I'll run the board twice, once with a small ROI and a second pass to do the large part(s) that needs a larger ROI to be seen correctly.  Or if needed place the part by hand as for now this is planned just for use for prototype builds.

[MR]

Here are two pictures of my machine:
Original:


I wrapped some foil from a tray around the lightning source to bundle the light:


from that moment on I never ran into such issues again.

My camera is B/W but you can clearly see the light is bouncing off the fiducial in the corner, it was a HASL-leadfree PCB where the surface is not 100% even. Someone could argue that this is something a manufacturer should take care about since they earn their money with those machines but there are just so many topics the smaller manufacturers have never seen that you shouldn't wonder.

If your pad of the component is so dark the light is not where it is supposed to go.

Who knows where the light of your illumination goes to, certainly not to the camera sensor.

[PCBprototyping]

Try to go there with a torch and add some light in a different angle, maybe add a diffuser (eg. milky acrylic around the leds after the torch experiment).
You need to get a clear picture of the pads via the camera.

There's no obvious way to modify the camera/lighting design, it's more or less one large assembly.  My problem seems to be related to some sort of reflection from something in the head - when I tape off the hole(s) things seem to work. Taping off pick head #2 isn't my first choice, I would like to find a better way to solve the reflection problem.  Tronstol has given me two suggestions to try - though I still can't figure out why this seems to be an issue that nobody else seems to have.

It has been suggested by the US distrib that I try and get it just to see the pads vs. the body of the cap.  For me that seems even more daunting than trying to kill the reflection as there's no guidance on how that might be done.  Also I think that until I kill the reflection the edge detection software - in its current state - is going to continue to be confused.

My backup plan is to just cut the ROI down.  If I have a board with small and large parts that need to use the DCAM I'll run the board twice, once with a small ROI and a second pass to do the large part(s) that needs a larger ROI to be seen correctly.  Or if needed place the part by hand as for now this is planned just for use for prototype builds.

Tronstol DCAM illumination works differently than most of machines on the market, it's side illumination instead of up looking, so you will never get just the pins illuminated if body is almost at the same level. You cannot change the illumination values for DCAM.

As mentioned, head 2 reflection comes from hairline at the corner of head protection board(I believe it's fibre left from the cutout process), you can see that it's at the same spot at both illuminated and non illuminated image and it's kinda red on both images. Try to remove this hairline with the tweezers or something, for sure this is a problem for head 2.
It's not true, that nobody had the reflection problem like you have with head 1, I had it and solved it by thorough investigation where it's coming from and by removing a dust that stuck on the 3D printed groves surrounding the camera(see photo attached). Seems your dust is somewhere else, but it's definitely removable.
Go step by step:
- remove the DCAM lens. Dust, no dust?
- remove the illumination and laser board surrounding the fiducial cameras. Dust, no dust?
- put a tape on side walls of DCAM. Dust, no dust?
- add some none transparent cover over machine cover. Dust, no dust?

There's small chance that the dust is on the camera itself, but I doubt.

[lamabrew]

Here's a picture of the (upward looking) DCAM


(separate question, how do you get inline images without them being attachments?  I can not figure that out despite RTFM)

[lamabrew]

Here's a video of "forcing" the failure with Head 2 holding the part (and offset a bit by using the Rotation button, whatever that is for is unknown) by making the lower standoff on the head assembly more reflective:  https://youtu.be/czEh59rQVpA

Some pictures attached of other mods that seem to allow the cap, when held in Head 2, to always be detected correctly:

Sharpied the hex standoff, then rotated it a bit so it wasn't reflecting directly back down.

Covered the stepper motor screw heads with electrical tape, that got rid of more. (but it's not going to hold, need to find something different).

Blacked out the inside of the white cover just in case, but I don't have any indication that was actually a source of a reflection.

Sharpied all of the cutouts on the head too.  Not perfect but it reduced the problem enough that it *seems* like the edge detection isn't getting confused.  Who knows how it will act tomorrow.

IMHO this is a design issue with the E1.  They need to black out anything around the head assembly.  Making it so the thresholding doesn't get confused would help.  IMHO for parts being scanned with the DCAM camera there should be a ROI setting for the part, that way we could fine tune where it's going to look.  Probably would speed up processing too.

[PCBprototyping]

See attached photo, circled is the hairline that I'm talking about and you need to remove. It clearly made a reflection in the pdf photos. Please, remove it as it makes no sense for me to help you, if you don't want follow the suggestions.
What I noticed also is, that you have the nozzle with velvet protection in head 2. Some dust gets stuck in this velvet and causes the reflection, I had this problem with Neoden K1830, which uses up shooting illumination, so it shines directly on the velvet. I cleaned the velvet with compressed air and it went away.
In the video, reflection seems very straight cut on the right side, which means that it's coming through the board surrounding the heads as the edge of the board makes straight edge in reflection.
I agree that area around the camera should be more protected, but from my investigation it would be enough to make white cover surround the whole area, not just the front and making plexiglass less transparent.

[lamabrew]

See attached photo, circled is the hairline that I'm talking about and you need to remove

Sorry, that was a "before" picture.  It's gone now.  Attached captures of what DCAM sees now with things taped off, sharpied, etc.

However despite the testing in the DCAM test being 100% in terms of part orientation/footprint, pick tests or place tests are only good about half the time.  I suspect slowing things down more might help.  When I started DCAM this quest was almost always failing and after the mods DCAM (in the test dialog) seems to always work.  So I'm hopeful I'll get the placement to be reliable too.

[Styno]

To me it looks like it's more a problem with the lighting (and reflectivity of the capacitor's soldering tabs) than a speed issue. A bit more contrast would help i think.

Edit: Sorry, this was already mentioned earlier. 

[lamabrew]

Just when I thought I could move on...

Ghosty #1 is back...I switched the 220 nozzle to head #1 and put the #65 in head #2.  From trial & error I found that increasing the exposure 1 unit (no idea what that means IRL) the edge detect worked better, but that also increased the reflection brightness (from the multiple sources) and more or less borked using head #2 - hence my switch back to head #1.

#65 has a smaller ring (not sure what you want to call it) so the camera can see more in the hole for head #2.  Figured out that the reflection is from the shank of the nozzle holder (see red circle in pix).  I was able to isolate that by holding a small piece of black tape with tweezers and moving it around, and then comparing the view with and without the extra light.  I can't put tape their as it would interfere with the nozzle pickup (the reflection is from the bottom of the tailpiece on the head). I'm not sure I want to paint around there either as I wouldn't want to get paint up in the barrel of the tailpiece.  IMHO the fix here is Tronstol needs to anodize all the "shiny" things (shafts, tailpiece, screw heads, standoffs, etc) flat black to kill the reflections.


I think without that the E1 DCAM is never really going to work right. (or they get better software that can figure out to ignore these things)

For now I'm going to go back to cutting the ROI down to keep the reflections outside of where the camera is looking.

[lamabrew]

Came up with one more thing to do to show the problem is inherent in the E1. Take a black Sharpie and scribble all over the tailpiece/shank for head 2. (picture is for head #1 holding the cap)

Reflections go way down.  TBD if it's enough to stop breaking the edge detection, I trust the ROI reduction more than this hack.

[lamabrew]

Had to set the E-1 aside again, but now need to put some simple boards together.  During setup I had it swap nozzles on Head 1 (has the autochanger option).

It made a funny noise doing that and now Head 1 is bent sideways and actually loose, i.e. I can pivot it a bit. Guessing maybe a screw popped off somewhere?  Will post when I figure it out.

For now will just use head 2 to build things but annoying that it keeps having issues.  The black tape and black marker you see in the pictures are the fixes to make the camera work, i.e. the shiny metal parts reflect light down into the camera and the software barfs trying to figure out the footprint.

[PCBprototyping]

Why do you keep covering the reflection and don't fix it? If you cannot find it or remove it, this is not your problem and don't accept the machine as is. It just makes you disapointed and gives other users a wrong information about the machine.
Find attached the images of how it should look like, you can see all black around the nozzles and TQFP and images were taken under normal office lights, no reflection. Recognition is perfect.
For bent head 1, if you swing it to the left, does it stay straight? To check if it's bent, swing it to the left, insert a big, flat nozzle into head 1(CN750), use manual mode to lower the head above the PCB rails and slowly approach the rails. When you're i.e. 0.5 mm above the rails, use the manual rotation in both directions to see, if the nozzle is parallel to the rail(check left and right + front and back parallelism). If it's ok, head is not bent, but the head guide rails are probably loose, maybe screw fell out because of transport or sth. Remove the cover and see, if you can identify a fault.

[lamabrew]

Why do you keep covering the reflection and don't fix it? If you cannot find it or remove it,

Sorry, I'm not following.  The source of the reflections are all of the shiny things in the head assembly:

• hex standoffs
• screw heads
• collar assembly

The fix is to black them out, in my case some electrical tape and sharpie did the trick.  The actual fix would be for Tronstol to anodize the parts black.  Cutting the ROI down helps, though if it had to place large parts then that trick can't be used.  A second fix would be to have the software support setting the ROI of each footprint as well as provide some way to set thresholds/brightness on a per part basis.

These reflections are so far only a problem on certain parts that are smaller and low contrast, specifically SMT electrolytic caps.

The TQFP example is not equivalent to what happens with a 6x6mm SMT cap with a very dark plastic piece; the large TQFP parts covers a lot of reflection sources as well as it's quite a bit brighter and the contrast much higher.

. Remove the cover and see, if you can identify a fault.

The motor shaft does not appear bent, but I also can not push the motor back in position to make it plumb.  I'm guessing something has gone wrong with the guide track/slide, in the video you can see Head 2 is rock solid where as Head 1 is easy to make wobble.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/eDyDMtSW4xYcBz8z8

The motor shaft itself does not seem bent, rotating it the nozzle stays in the same offset position
https://photos.app.goo.gl/2jt6dZb56nnmJUYT8
 
It's not exactly clear how to take the head apart further so I've handed it back to the distri to sort out with Tronstol.  For now I'll just run with Head 2 so I can finish up a project.

[PCBprototyping]

The TQFP example is not equivalent to what happens with a 6x6mm SMT cap with a very dark plastic piece; the large TQFP parts covers a lot of reflection sources as well as it's quite a bit brighter and the contrast much higher.

That's why I added the pictures without TQFP also, just the nozzle which is small and similar to electrolytic capacitor. The recognition doesn't catch any reflection around it and correctly makes a frame around the nozzle.


For the head 1, you can see in the video, that guide rail is moving, so it's not fixed and that's why the head swings.
To check the parallelism, rotating the head by hand is not good enough to see if nozzle is parallel to working area or not. Use the SW manual mode, like I mentioned.

[lamabrew]

That's why I added the pictures without TQFP also, just the nozzle which is small and similar to electrolytic capacitor.

The nozzles have a reasonably bright ring around them that isn't there with the caps.  I think the reflective feet of the cap makes whatever processing the software is doing turn the gain down. For example: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/manufacture/tronstol-e1-experience/?action=dlattach;attach=1740245

The recognition doesn't catch any reflection around it and correctly makes a frame around the nozzle.

I have no explanation as to why your machine acts differently.  I took your pictures and boosted them (see attached example), you have some of the reflections I see but at a much lower level. And some I have don't show up at all on your screen captures.  Maybe your machine was built with different things than mine?  The one the US distri has is different than mine.

There are no knobs on the DCAM that I can find to adjust exposure, etc.  Regardless, black tape and sharpie fixed it for me.  Hopefully someday more people with an E-1 will join in and we'll have another data point(s).

On the head 1 being angled & wobbly, I'm going to let Tronstol tell me what to do. It looks like I can take the (head rotation) motor off with the 4 bottom screws and I assume there will be screws under where the motor sits that attach the bracket to slide/linear bearing, and assume taking that apart will reveal something loose or broken.

Between the blown controller board, the defective left feeder due to factory assembly error, fighting with DCAM and reflections, and now head 1 busted, all in less than 40 hours of the machine being powered on, has been just a tad frustrating.

I tried doing a 'work' run with only head 2 enabled, but the software partially ignores that and tried to have head 1 pick up a nozzle anyway, which fails (mechanically) and wedges the software (i.e. Replacing nozzle dialog just sits there) and requires a power cycle to get things cleared.  By setting all slots of the autochanger to empty I was able to stop head 1 from trying to pick up a nozzle.  Clearly software bugs.

However the software would then only place the parts that matched the nozzle in head 2 and then decide it was done, never offering up changing the nozzle manually. Then it gets confused if I restarted the run with a different nozzle as most of the footprints are set for more than one nozzle size and it wants to place those parts a second time with the new nozzle.  I went back to edit mode and just did the rest that way as it was a small board.  I don't see what I could have set wrong to not have it ask for the next nozzle without losing track of what was already placed.  Buggy software I guess.

[Loky22]

Hallo lamabrew , thanks for your write experience ,
I need take decision for pick and place too and i thought that this machine was better of Neoden4  all do think so . But with real your  experience i see than isn't so.
Neoden4 i see work and is very well problem is old software and dont can upgrade .





 

[PCBprototyping]

That's why I added the pictures without TQFP also, just the nozzle which is small and similar to electrolytic capacitor.

The nozzles have a reasonably bright ring around them that isn't there with the caps.  I think the reflective feet of the cap makes whatever processing the software is doing turn the gain down. For example: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/manufacture/tronstol-e1-experience/?action=dlattach;attach=1740245

The recognition doesn't catch any reflection around it and correctly makes a frame around the nozzle.

I have no explanation as to why your machine acts differently.  I took your pictures and boosted them (see attached example), you have some of the reflections I see but at a much lower level. And some I have don't show up at all on your screen captures.  Maybe your machine was built with different things than mine?  The one the US distri has is different than mine.

There are no knobs on the DCAM that I can find to adjust exposure, etc.  Regardless, black tape and sharpie fixed it for me.  Hopefully someday more people with an E-1 will join in and we'll have another data point(s).

On the head 1 being angled & wobbly, I'm going to let Tronstol tell me what to do. It looks like I can take the (head rotation) motor off with the 4 bottom screws and I assume there will be screws under where the motor sits that attach the bracket to slide/linear bearing, and assume taking that apart will reveal something loose or broken.

Between the blown controller board, the defective left feeder due to factory assembly error, fighting with DCAM and reflections, and now head 1 busted, all in less than 40 hours of the machine being powered on, has been just a tad frustrating.

I tried doing a 'work' run with only head 2 enabled, but the software partially ignores that and tried to have head 1 pick up a nozzle anyway, which fails (mechanically) and wedges the software (i.e. Replacing nozzle dialog just sits there) and requires a power cycle to get things cleared.  By setting all slots of the autochanger to empty I was able to stop head 1 from trying to pick up a nozzle.  Clearly software bugs.

However the software would then only place the parts that matched the nozzle in head 2 and then decide it was done, never offering up changing the nozzle manually. Then it gets confused if I restarted the run with a different nozzle as most of the footprints are set for more than one nozzle size and it wants to place those parts a second time with the new nozzle.  I went back to edit mode and just did the rest that way as it was a small board.  I don't see what I could have set wrong to not have it ask for the next nozzle without losing track of what was already placed.  Buggy software I guess.

That's why I added the pictures without TQFP also, just the nozzle which is small and similar to electrolytic capacitor.

The nozzles have a reasonably bright ring around them that isn't there with the caps.  I think the reflective feet of the cap makes whatever processing the software is doing turn the gain down. For example: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/manufacture/tronstol-e1-experience/?action=dlattach;attach=1740245

The recognition doesn't catch any reflection around it and correctly makes a frame around the nozzle.

I have no explanation as to why your machine acts differently.  I took your pictures and boosted them (see attached example), you have some of the reflections I see but at a much lower level. And some I have don't show up at all on your screen captures.  Maybe your machine was built with different things than mine?  The one the US distri has is different than mine.

There are no knobs on the DCAM that I can find to adjust exposure, etc.  Regardless, black tape and sharpie fixed it for me.  Hopefully someday more people with an E-1 will join in and we'll have another data point(s).

On the head 1 being angled & wobbly, I'm going to let Tronstol tell me what to do. It looks like I can take the (head rotation) motor off with the 4 bottom screws and I assume there will be screws under where the motor sits that attach the bracket to slide/linear bearing, and assume taking that apart will reveal something loose or broken.

Between the blown controller board, the defective left feeder due to factory assembly error, fighting with DCAM and reflections, and now head 1 busted, all in less than 40 hours of the machine being powered on, has been just a tad frustrating.

I tried doing a 'work' run with only head 2 enabled, but the software partially ignores that and tried to have head 1 pick up a nozzle anyway, which fails (mechanically) and wedges the software (i.e. Replacing nozzle dialog just sits there) and requires a power cycle to get things cleared.  By setting all slots of the autochanger to empty I was able to stop head 1 from trying to pick up a nozzle.  Clearly software bugs.

However the software would then only place the parts that matched the nozzle in head 2 and then decide it was done, never offering up changing the nozzle manually. Then it gets confused if I restarted the run with a different nozzle as most of the footprints are set for more than one nozzle size and it wants to place those parts a second time with the new nozzle.  I went back to edit mode and just did the rest that way as it was a small board.  I don't see what I could have set wrong to not have it ask for the next nozzle without losing track of what was already placed.  Buggy software I guess.

Nozzle reflection:
Please, accept finally, that our machine works and yours doesn't and send it back to Neoden USA or request their on site service! It is in warranty and it's not your problem if it came with a dust inside which CLEARLY affects the recognition. Tronstol shows electrolytic capacitor placement in their application video and you can see, they don't have this refelction and placement works just fine:
https://youtu.be/92ktbBHFBig?t=436
Focus on solving the problems, not on searching and discussing why your machine works like it works, because you can clearly see that it has a fault. You are just waisting my time, I told you what to do with my longtime experience in protototyping machines, I can't endlessly reply to your emails and try to convince you to finally send the machine back to Neoden USA and request a repair or replacement. In Europe, you have a few days of time to report faulty machine after the purchase and you recognized a fault immediatelly. I'm not sure, what is the claim period in USA, but I'm sure, buyer is protected more than a seller.
Hope you finally let others solve your problem. You are a user, not a service guy. Thank you.

The boosted reflection is filtered out and doesn't affect the recognition. However, image is not the same as it shows just the area around the needle which can be seen through the cutout, but your image clearly shows an "intruder", which is not part of normal machines and this source of reflection needs to be removed by a service guy.

I can't comment on what happened with head 1, but this is also problem for your seller, so don't waste time thinking about it and let others do the repair.

[MR]

> Please, accept finally, that our machine works and yours doesn't and send it back to Neoden USA or request their on site service!

before issuing such a statement, how about he sends you a strip with those components so you can doublecheck?
My experience is some users use components which might be tricky - which means you just did not run into that issue yet with your projects.

[lamabrew]

You are just wasting my time, I told you what to do with my longtime experience in protototyping machines, I can't endlessly reply to your emails and try to convince you to finally send the machine back to Neoden USA and request a repair or replacement

Apologies, I do not intend to waste anyone's time with these posts.  I am simply relaying my experience with getting an E-1 set up to do small prototype builds.  My reasons were two-fold:

• Get feedback from other users about their experience(s)/be a single common thread on EEVBlog for E-1 users
• Document my journey from going from a bunch of boxes at my door to finished PCBs

I really appreciate the time you have taken to explain/show what your machine does.  Please do not feel you must/need to respond to these posts.

Your machine clearly has some differences from mine (i.e. head assembly reflections) and you didn't experience the mis-assembled feeder, blown controller card, and failed Head 1. The US user that I spoke with before purchasing also did not experience any of those things, so I can write this off as a certain amount of bad luck on my part combined with lack of good QC at Tronstol at the time my E-1 was assembled.  Which was almost a year ago - I'll spare the details on how/why it took so long for me to get it, etc.  I can believe Tronstol has changed/improved things in that time period.

As to returning the machine, that is not practical on many levels.  Mostly the costs involved in trucking a unit, as well as I need it.  I have actually had good results with it assembling so far, I haven't had a chance to post that as well as so far it's been simple things and I want to try a more complex board next week.

There's no need for the US distri to come on site, Tronstol DHL's me the replacement parts and makes a video showing the process to do the repair.  I learn more about the machine this way, though obviously not having to learn how to take out the whole guts of it to replace something would have been the preferred outcome.  NeodenUSA has helped smooth the whole Tronstol help cycle and at this point is very invested in the support.

I do hope Tronstol can keep improving the software to deal with the instabilities as well as make certain things more efficient.  Providing some (per part/footprint) knobs for DCAM to deal with the range of devices encountered would be a huge help.

[PCBprototyping]

> Please, accept finally, that our machine works and yours doesn't and send it back to Neoden USA or request their on site service!

before issuing such a statement, how about he sends you a strip with those components so you can doublecheck?
My experience is some users use components which might be tricky - which means you just did not run into that issue yet with your projects.

Find attached the recognition photos for a bit smaller cap. Recognition is good with both algorithm methods.

[lamabrew]

I see two big difference in the cap in the above vs. mine:
- Base on my cap is not rectangular (see attached picture)
- Leads stick out a bit

Here's a video of a typical failure (after killing the reflections)
 

In that run the Threshold alg always worked, but I have seen it fail sometimes too.  The Forstner edge detect seems to fail almost all the time and on pretty much everything, not just caps.

[PCBprototyping]

Rectangular or square doesn't matter, the biggest difference I see is that image is much better on my picture, maybe your shooting height is too low or too high?
Component doesn't need to be recognized with both algorithms, that's why it's possible to select the best one in package library.
First try to get a better image with shooting height and then try treshold algorithm again, maybe this will correct occassional failed detection. If it still occurs, video would help a lot to see what was going on. It would help Tronstol also to correct the SW if there's a bug.

You can let me know the P/N of the cap you use and I'll buy it here in Europe to show you cap is not a problem.

[PCBprototyping]

Hallo lamabrew , thanks for your write experience ,
I need take decision for pick and place too and i thought that this machine was better of Neoden4  all do think so . But with real your  experience i see than isn't so.
Neoden4 i see work and is very well problem is old software and dont can upgrade .

I used both Neoden 4 and Tronstol E1 and I can say that E1 is much more reliable, precise and with better SW.
Neoden has bad feeder design, which shakes components or lets the plastic tape fall off the support. SW and old Windows platform is also a big drawback.

Problem from Iamabrew is not the machine problem, but some dust or sth creates reflection on his machine, which is clearly identifiable in recognition.
You can send me a board and some components and I'll try them for you, if you want.

[MR]

> Please, accept finally, that our machine works and yours doesn't and send it back to Neoden USA or request their on site service!

before issuing such a statement, how about he sends you a strip with those components so you can doublecheck?
My experience is some users use components which might be tricky - which means you just did not run into that issue yet with your projects.

Find attached the recognition photos for a bit smaller cap. Recognition is good with both algorithm methods.

from my point of view this is also a poor picture.

You're doing something like canny algorithm on the picture, that's also not the best.
The problem is the illumination source, the source is inappropriate for this component, there are quite a few ways that can be tried to fix this issue.

https://www.vision-doctor.com/en/

this website has some valuable information about light sources.

In particular this one:

https://www.vision-doctor.com/en/illumination-techniques/diffuse-incident-light.html

look at the dark spots on the foil, looks familiar since the light is bouncing off and not entering the camera.

[PCBprototyping]

Surface recognition, that vision doctor shows is not important for this cap recognition, as we just need a clear edge to make a frame around it, not surface view. Tronstol E1 uses dark field illumination, which is also described on Vision doctor as an example of machine vision for edge illumination(https://www.vision-doctor.com/en/lighting-for-machine-vision.html). Frame is right on the edge of pins and plastic body, so goal has been achieved. SW calculates the center by calculating mid point of shorter and longer side of frame and, as the frame is precise, center will also be precise.

Keep in mind this is not a 150k pick & place before you dive deep in sofisticated camera, illumination and recognition solutions.

It does edge detection, but doesn't do pin area recognition, etc. So for non-simetrical parts you will need to define offset between center of pad area and center of body + pad area(for flat ribbon cable connectors i.e.) for correct pacement. It can be calculated easily, you just do a test pick-up which will show you the dimensions, recognized by edge detection and calculate the center. Offset is the difference between pin + body center and pick&place file center.

Surface recognition is done by fiducial camera for fiducial recognition, automatic center of the pocket detection, bulk recognition and feeder bank calibration and this one uses top illumination and OpenCV to recognize objects.

[lamabrew]

First try to get a better image with shooting height and then try threshold algorithm again,

What height are you using?  I should probably start with that value.

You can let me know the P/N of the cap you use and I'll buy it here in Europe to show you cap is not a problem.

That's very kind of you to try this out. There's two SMT caps that I've tried:
Panasonic    EEE-1VA101XP      https://octopart.com/search?q=EEE-1VA101XP
Panasonic    EEE-FK1E100AR    https://octopart.com/search?q=EEE-FK1E100AR

[lamabrew]

Some more lessons learned...

Despite just having one working head, I was able to work around the problems described earlier (1] software still tried to pick up a nozzle in the disabled head and 2] would not keep track of what was already placed when a footprint allowed more than one nozzle) and build some simple boards.  The fix for #1 is set the autochanger holder to empty for all slots.  The solution to #2 is only define one nozzle per footprint.

I've learned two more things:
1]
Reverse LEDs, i.e. ones where they will shine down through a hole in the PCB so are in the tape upside down from normal LEDs, can not be scanned with the 3D scanner.  But the DCAM (upward looking camera) is able to figure it out almost all the time.  For the few failures it's easy to fix; if i was doing lots of boards I would figure out why it occasionally missed one but with only 40 LEDs total to place across the run simpler to just correct after placing.

2]
Double check the DCAM camera well before starting a run.  As noted earlier the DCAM manual part check has two bugs: 1] can't tell the system the pick height so it just mashes the head into the part and 2] When you finish (i.e. go to some other function) it shuts off the vacuum and drops the part in to the camera.

I was catching them with a piece of paper but I clearly missed some.

That means a couple of parts ended up on the glass cover over the DCAM, and since this is well below the illumination ring they do not show up in the pictures.  And being way out of the focal plane they were making funny dark blotches that I didn't notice.  They did however make the DCAM totally unreliable, I suspect head movement shaked them around enough to have them be in the way sometimes.

Removing those from the DCAM camera well let me complete the board build.

[PCBprototyping]

First try to get a better image with shooting height and then try threshold algorithm again,

What height are you using?  I should probably start with that value.

You can let me know the P/N of the cap you use and I'll buy it here in Europe to show you cap is not a problem.

That's very kind of you to try this out. There's two SMT caps that I've tried:
Panasonic    EEE-1VA101XP      https://octopart.com/search?q=EEE-1VA101XP
Panasonic    EEE-FK1E100AR    https://octopart.com/search?q=EEE-FK1E100AR

I use almost the same part as EEEFK1E100AR.

It's 5x4.4, height 5.6 mm, I've just set the shooting height in DCAM tool to 5 mm and that's it. Today I measured the height precisely by touching it with the nozzle and then touching the tray height to calculate the difference and I got 5.6 mm.
I get 5.00 x 4.36 with Foerstner and Threshold on DCAM. The difference from last photos is because of 0.6mm height difference as image was bigger than at 0 focus and scaling is therefore wrong. However this doesn't affect the center calculation as everything is proportionally bigger/smaller.
Today I even tried the laser recognition of this cap as it's small enough to fit the laser aperture. It works fine, you just need to change the laser shooting height as default setting is TOP=0.2 mm, which hits the round body and doesn't give you the rotation info. You need to hit it at pin or plastic body level, BOTTOM=0.1 worked for me, dimensions were 4.95 and 4.33.


Just check the height in PDF, enter this value in tools/DCAM/chip thickness and that's it.

I see no reason to buy so similar component to mine, but I'll do it anyway and let you know the result.

Instead of Tools/DCAM, I suggest you to use edit/material/pick test to check the component dimensions and recognition as it's much more cenvenient to work with(use the tray mode so it will put it back after the recgnition). You won't need to manually add the component to the nozzle, it's easy to change package and recognition parameters and it will always put the component back to pick location, so you can try the recognition repeatedly and adjust the parameters.

Can you send the link to reverse LED, you use, so I could check how it looks like?

[lamabrew]

Sorry, I wasn't clear on which height I wanted to know your value for.  I meant the "Shooting Height" in Settings-> System Options

I didn't spend much time on the smaller cap, I don't think I saved any results. Most of my effort was on the 100 uF (6.6x6.6mm base) as that was on the board I was building.

Instead of Tools/DCAM, I suggest you to use edit/material/pick test to check the component dimensions and recognition as it's much more cenvenient to work with(use the tray mode so it will put it back after the recognition). You won't need to manually add the component to the nozzle, it's easy to change package and recognition parameters and it will always put the component back to pick location, so you can try the recognition repeatedly and adjust the parameters.

The Pick test only briefly flashes up the results and my timing to do the screen capture was not good; doing it in the DCAM test it leaves the image up so much easier to capture it.

I see no reason to buy so similar component to mine, but I'll do it anyway and let you know the result.

Agree, Tronstol should be the ones doing this. 

Can you send the link to reverse LED, you use, so I could check how it looks like?

Wurth 156125RS75000 https://octopart.com/search?q=156125RS75000
Wurth 156125VS75000 https://octopart.com/search?q=156125VS75000

They're the same part as the normal ones, they're just in the tape with the dome side facing down. The ones here have a rectangular dome, some versions have rounded domes. Don't know how much difference that would make with DCAM but might be an issue for the 3Dsensor?

[PCBprototyping]

I did not change the shooting height in settings, I did not mean shooting height as a parameter, but actual height where head stops inside the illumination ring. Just play around with component height in tools/dcam and you will see, which one gives you the best image. Shooting height(-26 mm) + chip thickness(5 mm i.e.) gives you head height value(-21). Change chip thickness by 0.1 mm in both directions and you will see the difference. Then use this value as component height in the library. Note, that you need to press enter after each change, otherwise the value won't be updated.

These reverse LEDs are perfect for the laser, I'believe you have a problem, because your shooting them too low with a laser, most probably your setting is TOP=0.2, which will hit the component 0.2 mm below the nozzle and since the LEDs base height is 0.28 mm and has some gaps, you get inconsistent reading(see attachment). Change shooting height to TOP=0.1 and check it.
Shooting the LEDs at lens height might work also, if laser beam doesn't go through the lens, but for sure won't work for round lens as they won't give you the rotation. I recommend shooting it at base height.

[lamabrew]

I did not change the shooting height in settings

Just to make sure I have this right, you left it at the 33 default shown in the manual?

These reverse LEDs are perfect for the laser, [snip] I recommend shooting it at base height.

Makes sense.  Though at this point I'm just about done so I'll save this plan for the reverse LEDs for "next time" as it's good enough with the DCAM for now.

Looks like it will be next week when I get to doing a bigger/more parts board - I still have to pull Head 1 apart to figure out why it's loose and not going to be in the office part of this week.  I'll post what I find.

[PCBprototyping]

It's at -32.5, like it was set from the factory.

[lamabrew]

Update on Head 1 wobble/non parallel operation:

Took things apart over the weekend and turned out the 4 screws that hold the head #1 rail were loose.  Tightened them up, reassembled, realigned the heads, and seems to all be OK now.

How they loosened up so quickly is a mystery.

Getting the motor out was a bit painful and getting it back in was even more painful as the 4 screws that hold it in are very difficult to access with the head on the machine and the bottom plate (3D scanner) in place. I was not inclined to try and take all of that apart to get the motor off. To get at the four rail screws you do need to remove the motor, though I did not need to remove the carriage bracket from the belt to get to the screws.

While everything was opened up I went at everything shiny with the black sharpie and added black heat shrink to the hex standoff to further kill the reflections.

[TJ232]

Hi lamabrew,

Did you managed to fix the above issues?
Did they solved your feeders problem?

It looks like a decent destktop size/weight office machine and despite the higher price for it's class might be a good option if working as advertised.

Any other E1 users around?
Please feel free to share your personal experience.

Thanks,
TJ.

[lamabrew]

Did you managed to fix the above issues?
Did they solved your feeders problem?

It looks like a decent destktop size/weight office machine and despite the higher price for it's class might be a good option if working as advertised.

All of the issues I had have been resolved.  Of course it would have been great not to have had these in first place. I see them as more a QC/QA failure than a fundamental problem with the design of the machine.  Having dealt with similar "off shore" equipment suppliers I went in to this with the expectation that things would come up.  That being said even the big $$$ machines have issues - at least based on conversations with a local CM.

The feed mechanism operates what I would call reasonably well.  There's defintely time needed to futz with settings for certain parts to get reliable pickups but once set things stay stable.  The more I use it the better I'm getting at guessing what/how to tweak.

There are defintely some things that I would call bugs in the software, and there's a number of things they could do to make the system easier to set up and run.  None of them prevent me from assembling boards, though I'm only using this for small batchs (< 20), and mostly for prototypes.  I think it probably would be fine for making 100s of not too complex boards at a time.

My designs are generally conservative with smallest parts being 0603s, though there's 0.5mm pitch QFNs. Placement accuracy seems good and I doubt 0402s would be an issue.  It places 0201 well on the test board, but I have not actually built things with those. My gut feeling is that if I did have a problem I could slow things down to get better repeatability - for me absolute speed isn't a concern.

Loading the reels is a relatively slow process so if doing a high product mix that would be something to consider. The cost savings from not having to purchase the standard feeders is pretty big, and the reduction in CPH from having the pin feed is a total don't care for me.  I am considering picking up another feeder bank so I can swap out a side at a time.

[TJ232]

It's good to know that at least they provide support for such situations.
Did they change the broken parts?


It is working with 2 or 3 fiducials recognition?

How is repeatability? How many total boards did you made in one session

Regarding feeder banks, is it possible to change them on-the-fly or PNP machide need to be fully shutdown before change.

[lamabrew]

It's good to know that at least they provide support for such situations.
Did they change the broken parts?

yes, they sent replacement boards via DHL (two different shipments, first board did not fix the bad feeder problem)

It is working with 2 or 3 fiducials recognition?

It uses two. You also locate the board edge, as well as a what I would call a reference part.  That part of the setup is pretty easy.  For some things you just need to get close (i.e. the mark near the center of the camera) and you can hit an align button and the software figures it out.

How is repeatability? How many total boards did you made in one session

I have not had issues but I have not made many boards at once. 10 was the most.

Regarding feeder banks, is it possible to change them on-the-fly or PNP machide need to be fully shutdown before change.

For me, I find it's faster if doing more than one reel to pull the feeder bank out.  That requires shutting down the machine as the claim is my bank failure was because I unplugged it from the system while powered up.  Maybe someone with small hands would find loading reels in the feeder while on the machine easier.

When you take the feeder bank out you will need to realign it when you put it back in, again it's semi-automatic to do that.  You'll also need to get the new reel's feed/pick location into the machine.  Again this is now semi-automated.  The thing to watch out for is to not distrub any other reels, if you move the parts tape then you need to tell the machine where to feed/pick from again for that component. This is a tradeoff for any pin feed system vs. normal feeders.

A have a number of components (big caps, connectors) that I do as cut tape strips on the bed.  Also some ICs as for a short piece of cut tape attaching an extender for the peeler and getting it in to the machine is slower vs. putting it on the bed.  I need to make up some cut tape holders, for now I've been using plexiglass strips with double sided tape and it works well for me.  But I'm not doing big builds where swapping out stips like that would be annoying.

[MR]

No hotplugging on single feeders ... how cool is that..

[lamabrew]

SYNCHRONIZE FAILED!

Is a message you can get after updating a part (File->Material->Synchronize->Synchronize to library in E1-speak) and wanting to write the updated information back the library so that it will be what you want in the future.  These are things like Stack (pick location), speeds, offsets, etc.

Placing this here in case someone else has seen this and/or sees in this in the future and I can get an answer from Tronstol on what's wrong.

Going through each part to get it set up and the software just started giving this message.  There's no details of why it can't update, what's needeed to fix it, etc.  It's just broken. 

Sometimes the file:
/opt/easy/AppMain/bin/log.txt
has entries in it but it's blank now and there doesn't seem to be any other logging happening (nothing I can see in /var/log).

[PCBprototyping]

Seems like your SW version is not compatible with version of library.db file(some versions needed a separate upgrade file to add entries to db file as  Tronstol added some additional parameters) or you accidentaly left some parameter value empty(or O instead of 0), it happened to me before. Latest SW warns you if cell is empty.

[TJ232]

SYNCHRONIZE FAILED!

Is a message you can get after updating a part (File->Material->Synchronize->Synchronize to library in E1-speak) and wanting to write the updated information back the library so that it will be what you want in the future.  These are things like Stack (pick location), speeds, offsets, etc.

Placing this here in case someone else has seen this and/or sees in this in the future and I can get an answer from Tronstol on what's wrong.

Going through each part to get it set up and the software just started giving this message.  There's no details of why it can't update, what's needeed to fix it, etc.  It's just broken. 

Sometimes the file:
/opt/easy/AppMain/bin/log.txt
has entries in it but it's blank now and there doesn't seem to be any other logging happening (nothing I can see in /var/log).

This one doesn't sound good at all.
We were close to buy a Neoden YY1 machine but as it has ZERO software update availability it's more than a no, no for many, I'm definitely sure about that. I really don't understant their approach.
I really hope that at least for E1 they will offer a more decent way to do software/firmware upgrade to better approach these kind of issues.

[TJ232]

For me, I find it's faster if doing more than one reel to pull the feeder bank out.  That requires shutting down the machine as the claim is my bank failure was because I unplugged it from the system while powered up.  Maybe someone with small hands would find loading reels in the feeder while on the machine easier.

When you take the feeder bank out you will need to realign it when you put it back in, again it's semi-automatic to do that.  You'll also need to get the new reel's feed/pick location into the machine.  Again this is now semi-automated.  The thing to watch out for is to not distrub any other reels, if you move the parts tape then you need to tell the machine where to feed/pick from again for that component. This is a tradeoff for any pin feed system vs. normal feeders.

A have a number of components (big caps, connectors) that I do as cut tape strips on the bed.  Also some ICs as for a short piece of cut tape attaching an extender for the peeler and getting it in to the machine is slower vs. putting it on the bed.  I need to make up some cut tape holders, for now I've been using plexiglass strips with double sided tape and it works well for me.  But I'm not doing big builds where swapping out stips like that would be annoying.

A good idea very bad implemented.
To be able to change Feeders Bank on-the-fly can be one of the best selling points for their machine and can justify the increased price for it's class but it's not working as it should be. To shut down the machine, realign, etc, etc sound like more pain waiting you around the corner.

[lamabrew]

Seems like your SW version is not compatible with version of library.db file(some versions needed a separate upgrade file to add entries to db file as  Tronstol added some additional parameters) or you accidentaly left some parameter value empty(or O instead of 0), it happened to me before. Latest SW warns you if cell is empty.

Support at Tronstol sent me an update over the weekend - I was not expecting a reply so fast as it was Dragon Boat holiday. I will try it out tomorrow.  I suspect you are right about some "bad" data as it was working and then stopped while in the process of adding a boatload of new components.  Will report back once I try it out.

UPDATE:   The software update solved the problem.  I don't get any warnings about bad data, but I can update the library now.

[lamabrew]

To be able to change Feeders Bank on-the-fly can be one of the best selling points for their machine and can justify the increased price for it's class but it's not working as it should be. To shut down the machine, realign, etc, etc sound like more pain waiting you around the corner.

I have not run out of something while building as I'm only doing small prototype batches; replacing one reel isn't really a problem.  My comment was more about swapping out "a lot" of parts; it's defintely faster to take the feeder bank out. I do agree that it would be much better than powering down  to have some sort of program option to place the feeder bank in a safe state in terms of pausing things and unplugging.

I have some boards where I've got more part types than feeders.  Some of that I worked around by just placing cut tape in the tray area.  This is actually preferred when I'm already starting with very small cut tape - like when I have maybe a strip of 20 ICs and don't want to lose a few to getting them in to the feeders.  The machine very kindly puts parts back in the cut strip when you're adjusting/testing the pickup.

After speaking with another E1 user (they actually just bought a 2nd E1 and commented the new one is better than his 1+ year old one) he said purchasing some extra feeder banks is the best way to go in terms of change overs. Somewhere on DHL plane coming to me are 3 new feeder banks.  One I ordered with the "special" high feeders for handling SMT electrolytic caps, connectors, etc.    I am using BOMIST to manage parts and I put in to its inventory location field the feeder bank and number for parts that are on the machine. That gives me a good way to plan/report what goes where. What I have not tried to do is automate getting that info in to the E1.

I'll let you know how it goes with the multiple feeder banks, etc.  I feel like I still have a lot to learn about using the E1. 

On the Neoden YY - I have been peeking in on that thread and I agree something is not adding up in terms of software updates.

[TJ232]

Hi,

Did you manged to solve all the problems with feeders and software errors
Do you have any update regarding daily usage, how is running it thru a 10-50pcs batch for example.

It's anybody from inside EU using this type of machine and can share their own experience about?
It looks like the related website it's not working anymore: https://www.tronstolsmt.eu/

Thank you.

[lamabrew]

I could probably write several pages about what I've learned about the E1 in the past 6 months. I'll try and just give a short summary here:

• Get the latest software that use the camera to see what's in the nozzle changer/holder.  When things go wrong the machine will pound itself in to the ground...what turned out to be a nozzle with an oversized flange (I didn't know it at the time, this nozzle did not come from Tronstol) got jammed and caused the placement head to smash every nozzle holder, as well as bent up the head assembly again. There's apparently no error checking looking at what the motors are telling the gantry/head to do and what actually is reported back.  This also led to an earlier episode where a tape/feeder jam bent the needle and caused the pickup head to crash in to things.
  
• The new software has support for multiple feeder banks, but you still need to check all feeders as the tapes can move around taking them on/off the machine.  I'm also not sure it actually restores things quite right 100% of the time. However there's nothing in the library to tell you what feeder bank a part is on, you have to manage that outside of the machine. Which also means you need to split you PnP in to more than one file. If you have a 2 sided board then you definitely want to think through what parts go where to minimize feeder bank changes
• It is still annoying to have to power down the machine to swap feeder banks
• I have their old style stand and it really is too wobbly.  Lashing the stand to a support column made a huge difference as I think the parts were getting shaken off of the board.  They have a new stand, maybe this isn't an issue anymore
  
• Some ICs sometimes end up rotated a few degrees. QFNs and SOT-23x type parts. It seems consistent on certain parts but I have not figured out why. In part because I'm not building a lot of boards and so far it's easy to just give the component a small tap if needed.  If I was building 100s of boards I would go figure out why.
  
• I use the tray area a lot for cut tape as when you have just 5 boards to build it's not practical to get cut tape in to the feeders.  However the tray algorithm can't handle cut tape that isn't parallel to the machine horizontal axis.  This is annoying but not that difficult to deal with.  There could be some improvements to the UI for this.
  
• The auto align for the needle and pick work really well as long as the parts aren't on clear plastic tape.  This is another reason to get the newer software.
  
• The camera head still picks up things from the bottom of the head that cause the edge detection algorithm to go south.  Adjusting ROI has helped solve that, and I get the feeling the software maybe has had some improvements.  Occasionally I still have to cover the machine top (or turn out the lights). But it's gone from 90% failure to maybe 2% failure.

I've probably forgotten a lot of other things.

I've been dealing directly with the factory as the US distri dropped Tronstol.  They have been a great in answering questions and getting software updates out.  If I had a complaint it's that the software guide is way out of date and they've added a lot of new things that it's not clear what they do. 

For my needs - small 5 to 20 piece prototype batches every few weeks - it is working out and I don't have any regrets.  Of course I don't have anything to directly compare against. 

I was hoping a couple other users of the E-1 would find this thread and add their experiences/we could ask questions but that hasn't happened.  Not sure why.

[TJ232]

Thank you for your feedback, highly appreciated 

I was hoping that maybe we have also other E1 users that can share their thoughts about.

It's a pity that it was so much potential due to the better solution chosen for the part recognition and also the XY linear encoder closed-loop control.

[Jemma.zhang]

Hi，
You can contact Peter.Oelen,he'll give you the support in EU.This is his email: Peter.Oelen@tooltronics.nl

[Jemma.zhang]

Here is the document for the latest software for E1:https://www.tronstol.com/document-download/
You can download it from this link to update the software directly. Tronstol is constantly striving in the iterative process of E1.  We actively listen to user feedback and constantly upgrade the product.This link only for the SN code start from 1007 and 1008.If your machine's SN code is 1005 and 1006,you need email directly to ask the software.
Our R&D team is the startup team of Neoden. Tronstol focuses more on product quality and user experience.
E1 has many unique advantages in hardware and software:
For the hardware:
1.3D flying camera: laser camera flying shooting, greatly improving the accuracy and speed of desktop machines; It has three main features: 1. flying photography, 2. recognition of footprint with micrometer-level accuracy, 3. recognition of online nozzle size;
2. XY-axis linear encoder full closed-loop motion control to avoid component step loss, this patent is only available from Tronstol;
3. The machine body uses square steel frame to ensure its stability;
4.5-million-pixel high-precision IC camera, which can be selected as a large or small camera according to your IC size;
5. The detachable feeder bank greatly reduces the time you need to change materials when mounting different boards. For example, if you need to mount 2 different boards, one side of the feeder bank can install materials shared by 2 boards, while the other side of the feeder bank can install with different materials.  The three feeder banks can finish the placement of 2 boards. Because our software has a concept of material library, it greatly reduces the time for file editing. When you have more types of boards, the richer the information in the material library, and the shorter the time needed for marginal file editing...

For the software:
1. We continue to iterate and upgrade our software based on customer needs;
2. The software interface has been designed for industrial use, making it easy to operate;
3. Various functions, including 99 ICs and 99 bulk material placement settings;
4. Library function,the same material in the different PCB only need edit once;
5. Automatic correction of picking position;
6.Prototype with small quantity can mount without the file...