Reaching out to those who owns Essemtec P&P Machine(s)

[Mecanix]

Q1/2 2021's funding have been approved by our company's Chief Financial Officer (my wife, in this case) to acquire a Pick & Place Machine. I'm currently vetting between 3 products; all engineered and assembled in Europe, small footprint size-wise, and therefore require import. I'd like to reach out to those of you who've brought one of those FOX + Dispensing option in-house, I'd prefer to have a verbal conversation with you about the equipment and how it serves automation and reliability-wise.

PM or post here. Thanks in advance guys.
Prod in question: https://essemtec.com/en/products/pick-and-place/fox/

[Reckless]

Let me know how it goes.  I almost bought one but we needed something much faster.  It's size was very inspiring and the software was pretty. 

[SMTech]

I think there are 2 people on here who use Essemtec machines, @robint91 who has a FOX and me (Paraquda) I don't think either of us have the dispense option. If you talk to Essemtec-USA they should be able to find you someone to talk to a or even (better) a site to visit. If you are serious about the acquisition you need to be prepared to put in the time and travel to go and see it as well as your other options. Make sure you understand exactly what it can and cannot do, what you need and how good your regional support will end up being when you live in a giant country full of empty space . Sexy tho' dispense is, there are a vanishingly small number of people for whom it could be used instead of having a dedicated print platform and its only in its most recent incarnation that it's even been able to handle T4 pastes.

[Mecanix]

Let me know how it goes.  I almost bought one but we needed something much faster.  It's size was very inspiring and the software was pretty.

Ok will do. We aren't necessarily looking at speed although they appear to be very capable of it, but more looking into reliability, stability and "longevity" at this price range. Its small-size footprint indeed matters a lot in our case. Packing up that much precision in such a small form factor is rather attractive, a agree.

@SMTech - You are right. I've booked a remote LIVE demo of the machine via video with one of their HQ's tech. My list of questions is growing, which I'll send up-front so he can be prepared to answer and/or demo. And there is one more of you guys (!) who've reached out and who I will be calling this Saturday morning to discuss (he has two apparently). I'll let him advertise himself here if he wants too. Good to find out there are others who are Essemtec'ed here, thanks for that info... needed to know.

[SMTech]

We've had our Paraquda since 2012, no reliability issues in that time per se* and no signs of something cropping up in the future. I have CLM feeders, they definitely show their age and I would try and avoid them if you can, they hold back the machine in both speed and capability (2mm pitch OK rather than good with age). Paraquda is still belts which wear ~(we've changed X once, and that recently) linear motors don't even need that.

* we had 2 issues very early on, one with power that seemed to be a known issue with slightly elevated supply voltages -a large enclosure with giant electrolytic was added, and one head crash that broke a nozzle off the head on startup that they can't explain as it should not have been possible, presumably a random and very unusual bug.

[Mecanix]

Thanks for the feedback on its reliability and specially that heads up RE those CLMs. I'll ask if they have something in the similar range or if not superior, who knows. Sorry to hear ab the machine crash, hopefully this didn't sent it out of spec too much and you've all managed to put it back together. I run a ME workshop with several 3ax/4ax and one 5ax along with a few turning centers here so I do know how frustrating (and costly) a crash can be. Although the one I most recently had was sort-of 'predictable' (when you have +14hrs on the day and tired... you know).

+ I'll add the regulated supply question to the list (ty for that too). Fairly looking forward for a half-decent kit, we are about to retrofit a product line with several variants this late autumn and that will eventually require smd assembly by quantity. Our guesstimate is the machine will pay by itself within 20~24 months so hopefully it will last us min. a decade with its OOTB hardware. Happy to service the assemblies that wears out then, nothing last forever...

I'll report back if anything of importance or crimes to share, I doubt though. Looking solid...

[SMTech]

They swapped out the entire head and re-calibrated,, basically the head moved with one nozzle still locked in the toolchanger,"snap" so very weird because it doesn't park there and it was new enough at the time that I was double checking almost everything. There's almost no strength in the z axes for that kind of lateral force (why would there be) so no risk of damage to anything else.

The voltage issue was our UK 240V is almost 250V and they have worked to parameters much closer to 220V found in mainland Europe, when you watch the online diagnostics you could see big spikes during long axis movements. Presumably the real issue is back EMF and this massive bank of caps is the easy non invasive fix. I would assume they made the mod obsolete by Paraquda Gen2 and long before FOX if you could find a manual you would know, I think they called it a PAKON.

[robint91]

My experience with my Fox are quite good. No major of minor problem of the year I'm running it. I bought it brand new in August 2019. An within a couple of days it will have it first annual maintenance by essemtec guy's. The feeders are good and reliable. But I prefer the HyQ ones.
It does 0201 and 0.4mm bga without any problems.

So the dispensing, we almost put the 55k€ for the new dispensing head but after few nights sleep we didn't do it. We had a few remote demos but I find it still to limiting. For normal PCB without very fine pitch components you can't beat a good screen printer in speed and accuracy.

For very fine pitch stuff the resolution which it dispense dots is too coarse. The minimum they can do is 2 nanoliters. And some parts like the NRF52840  with its 0.35mm pitch bga requires only 1.5nl in my footprint.

I have a simple screen printer and I get framed stencils from pcbway or jlc. I always take the electropolishing option.

If you have really a need of the dispensing option, I wouldn't take it and invest in a good screen printer.

[Mecanix]

Absolutely love the trays and their arrangement on your shot, inspires confidence. I'll pass on the dispensing option to start-up and look forward the conventional method(s). Appreciate the insider info btw... those nights sleep must have been short. Thanks for confirming its pitch/case size capabilities. 0402 is vital in our case and required with excellent repeatability, the main reason I've been introduced to Essemtec in fact. Not much 0201 yet but good to know it will deal with it.

The ultimate question; are you 99.9% confident to have this bad boy running strong and serving for a decade?

[SMTech]

If you want a disadvantage, take the more traditional brands and you can cheaply buy buckets of 2nd user feeders, cloned feeders, cloned nozzles and other consumable bits. You can get none of that for Essemtec and some of those are really quite expensive e.g €400+ for a nozzle, €6k+ for a CLM 10 lane feeder; I think about €90 for a replacement cover tape spool on the CLM feeder, its this bit on CLM that wears with age and affects the accuracy of the rest of the feeder.

I think these machines are best the way we both have them, non-conveyor, standalone for small to medium batches but this comes at a cost if/when you try and do bigger batches. Manually loading each PCB gives your effective placement rate a massive de-rate unless you're standing next to like some kind of coiled spring.

We also found the dispense option intriguing, and the fact it was an option did play some part in us favouring this machine. The numbers hinted at in 2012 however were far lower than €55k but I never did get a proper quote for it, but then I had the impression both paste dispense and HyQ feeders were at that point something they had in the catalogue but didn't quite want to sell you. I think the very newest incarnation is perhaps better than @robint91 was told as it was suggested to me recently by the new UK rep that a new person in charge of such things at Essemtec had told them what they had wasn't good enough and they had something in the pipeline. Its after all quite some way behind what you can do with a MY700 and the same bits go in their dedicated dispensing machine which competes with that in some applications.