Electronics > Manufacturing & Assembly

Why so few low-end "manual" pick & place machines on the market?

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Dave8266:
I've recently been researching pick & place machines, and it struck me as odd how few basic manual pick & place machines were on the market.    Does anyone know why?

The mechanics are trivial, and the electronics (if any) are absolute commodity stuff - In this world of $100 3D printers and DIY CNC everywhere, I would have expected basic X/Y/Z carriages with an aquarium pump vacuum pen to be a product that at least one vendor would have latched onto, if not dozens of options from overseas.   But it seems to be an abandoned market.

There are of course plenty of high-end "request for quote" options (Fritsch, Manncorp, etc), and mid/high-tier machines like the "SMT Caddy", Fortex MPP1, Gold-Place MPP-11, CIF V900121, those from Madell, etc.  But at prices from $1,700-$3,500 USD, you're already above the cost of some hobbyist automatic Pick & Place machines (Liteplacer, OpenPNP, SimplePNP (if it ever delivers), etc), and quite close to the low-end commercial automatic units with feeders (Charm High CHMT36VA, etc).   The market is also littered with references to nice looking mid-range machines that no longer exist - such as the Eurocircuits eC-placer, VEGATEC V900022, LPKF ProtoPlace E, etc, all seemingly discontinued in favor of costlier machines with more features.

Aside from a bunch of clever homemade machines (vpapanik, etc), really the only low-end manual machine I could find for purchase was the PickSoEasy PSE-20... but even that starts at $580 without cameras or feeders, and goes up from there.  The next closest was the Abacom ezPick at $700, which looks like it uses drawer slides for motion?


I'll probably end up making something myself - pricing out extrusions, linear motion components, etc, it's looking to be <$100 in parts.  I'm just really surprised that the market doesn't already have these.   :-//

fcb:
It's all about the FEEDERS!

Used machines without feeders are virtually worthless, and a decent compliment of feeders will often be worth 2-3x what a machine is worth.

Before you cut a length of rail, build a nozzle or write a line of code, sort the feeders out.

jduncan:
It doesn't offer anything to a hobbyist with good eyes and a steady hand, and it's completely worthless for commercial purposes. No market.

Bud:
Since the question was about "manual" pnp, it is quicker to assemble a board with a tweezers. Also no need to prepair parts, just take the cut tape out of the bag, take what is needed and put it back in the bag (or reel). With my hand and tweezers i easily align parts with pads. Not sure what it may take to rotate a part just a smitten on a "manual" pnp.

jduncan:
Exactly. It is not hard to do 500CPH by hand with tweezer, and for a familiar design or simple panel you could go quite a bit faster.

Yes, a microscope helps a lot for small stuff but that's just a couple hundred. I am faster without magnifcation down to 0603, when I was younger probably 0402 would have been fine.

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