I've done two board runs with my machine so far.
The machine moving slow to the target, when it could move fast, is a nice to have however it isn't important. I'd much rather features such as a "soft pickup", where the pickup trajectory is damped. I hate seeing parts bounced unnecessarily.
From what I've observed, the vacuum sensing only seems to detect a mis-pick. But it does not continuously check throughout the rest of the trajectory.
I've had some trouble with tape feeding. Two new reels, a 10nF and LED both 0603. The tape feeders keep failing to feed enough. There is no error detection that the tape hasn't actually been feed. So the pickup attempts just mash the tape and bounce the components out. Becomes a mess, as you get 5 parts loose and jamming. Worse if you have two heads picking from the same tape.
There is an option for "Correct Size". Whatever you do, don't check this. I believe it's vision checking of the parts size. You end up getting a lot of suction errors and good parts dumped for no reason. Wasted sooo much time on this.
The tray pickup is handy, but it's gimped by not saving it's state. If you stop the machine... for example you want adjust the pickup or placement height of something, it's looses it's index. I've been running 8 cut-tapes in the tray position for expensive items for a short run of boards. It's a pain to either hand move parts or have to change the alignment for first component. Works fine if you're placing board after board. However during initial setup, it's frustrating. The tray area also doesn't support auto index on failed pickup. It just tries the same spot 5 times. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing.
The major frustration is with not being able to make changes without having to go all the way through the nozzle align, board feed, edge align, multiple fidicual matching... then placing. So if you do have an issue with a feeder not aligned or need to adjust something, you loose a couple of minutes going back/forth and starting again. I am SO over this sequence when I just want to tweak something.
You really need to align the heads and the heads with the camera. When I first tried to load boards, I thought there was no chance it could ever place 0402. Must align them yourself. Made a massive difference. There is no password to get into this area, just hit enter. It's shouldn't be labeled password, as it stops people unnecessarily. Aligning the head with the camera is a little more complicated... it needs to press/rotate pickup head 1 into some carbon paper, then inspect with the camera to align.
It's a little annoying that you cannot vision align parts at the back of the machine. The last couple of feeders it out of range for the camera. You have to use a nozzle check to see where it picks up from. Limitation of the design. I've got larger feeders in these positions.
There is a method to check the pickup height. You can test/adjust the height as well as do a pick test with vacuum. But there is no option to stop the pick test... i.e. "dump part" blow it off and stop the vacuum pump.
I can't find any way to test the PCB placement height. In fact if your PCB is loaded in a fixed position, you will have to change all the placement heights in all the feeders to match whatever height you have it set at. The only way I know parts aren't touching the board with enough placement, is they fly off. I don't know I'm pressing too hard, unless I can record some fast footage and slow motion it.
My biggest concern at the moment is that all the pickup heads are not even in height. There is no individual adjustment. I have two that are >0.5mm difference in height. One will bounce the tape and possible scatter parts, while the other may not pick up a part. I've swapped nozzles around to prove the difference is machine side. There is no individual calibration. I haven't pulled apart the head to see if I can manually adjust the gear position on the steppers to match them. But it's really important for pickup/placement success. I use two small pickup nozzles on the best matched heads, which has helped.
The software does have some features to auto assign BOM components to feeders. I've tried it. I find it a lot easier to manage the feeder sheet in Excel and generate the required loadout. That way I can also optimised pickup and placement based on component groups and sort by X/Y coordinates.
Loading tape is almost fast. It's really quick to insert new tape. However I waste so much time trying to get that pull off tape to feed through the gears. Sometimes I poke some sticky tape through from the other side. I'II have to try something like folding or twisting the tape end.
If anyone knows how to do any of the following, I'd love to hear from you :-)
1. Avoid going through head/PCB alignment after making a change to the placement file.
2. Adjust/match nozzle heights.
3. Test part placement height.
4. Overcome feeders being too weak to consistently feed.
I think the feeders indexing mechanism is the weakess mechanical aspect. The software could be more intuitive, although just having more appropriate English terms would help. The software really needs to give more for individual nozzle height adjustment/control, including component placement testing/tuning. This machine is a fraction of the cost of higher end machines. Can't expect the features of a high end machine. Really hope to see some upgrades in the software though. Overall... I'm starting to learn the quirks and hope to get the machine loading boards a bit more consistently.