Yes - what makes me suspicious is it looked like they were picking the QFP from a specially made tray, presumably to pre-align it.
Although you may be able to get away without vision for chips, once you get to smaller taped parts like TSOPs and MSOPs it's pretty much essential.
Ahh, just looking at the videos again, it seems they have different trays that you mount beside and populate for it to pick from for larger components,
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/677635/pnpmachine.jpghttps://dl.dropbox.com/u/677635/pnpmachine2.jpgthe trays that i saw had between 10 and 14 spaces which is pretty limited, I wonder if you could sacrifice some workspace for more trays to pick from? the trays don't seem to extend to the maximum range of the head either so that looks a bit wasted space...
the feeder config is pretty limited yeah, but it looks like it is limited because the way the tapes are held, the section that holds the tape in position seems fixed because its all machined out of the one piece of alu.
it seems like it would be pretty simple to customize so it isn't fixed thoguh, remove the fixed raised block that goes underneath either side of the tape and tap some threads into the base to mount new blocks, make up a bunch of blocks that have different spacings for different thickness tapes, you might need to make different tensioners too, i'm not sure, the wider tapes are always in the background, then reprogram
though, that does seem like a lot of work if you're buying a new, $3500 machine... although... for $3500, that's a pretty good deal still.