Neoden 4 pick and place

[mikeselectricstuff]

Something I wasn't quite clear on - as far as I can tell it needs the conveyor option to do long PCBs (says 1500mm on their site), presumably it does them is sections ( is this properly supported in the software yet?).
What I can't see is a spec for what size it can do without the conveyor.

[thommo]

Applicable PCB area:350mm*400mm
Placement Area:310*400mm(without waffle Tray)    140*400mm(With 1 waffle Tray)

Parameters:
Number of Heads with Vision enabled:4
Placement Rate:10000PCS/H(vision off)    5000PCS/H (vision on)
Feeder Capacity:Tape Reel Feeders:48   
Tape width:8mm,12mm,16mm,24mm
Vibration Feeders:5                                                   
IC Tray Capacity:5
Component sizes with vision:Smallest Component  size:0201  Largest
Component size:TQFP240                                                 
Applicable Components:0201,BGA,SOIC,SSOP,QFN,TQFP,Led Component,Diode,Triode,Tack Switch
Component Height Maximum:5mm
Resolution X/Y axis:0.01mm   Z axis:0.1mm
Rotation:+/-180(360)
Positioning Accuracy:+/-0.02mm
X-Y repeatability:+/-0.02mm
Applicable PCB area:350mm*400mm
Placement Area:310*400mm(without waffle Tray)    140*400mm(With 1 waffle Tray)
Programming:SOFTWARE AUTOMATIC PROGRAMMING/MANUAL MECHANICAL PROGRAMMING
Main Control:GUI
Power Supply:220V, 50Hz (convertible to 110V)
Power:180W
External Dimensions:Machine:87*68*48CM                                 
Packing size:94*74*60CM
Net Weight:60KGS
Gross weight:80Kgs
 
Main Features
1. Dual vision system (up-looking and down-looking camers), identify and calibrate the different components at one   
time,  improves the accuracy of placement from 0201 to BGA;
2. Auto rails, help to achieve continuous placement and solve the problem of long LED bar, ex. 1.2m LED strip;
3. Automatic electric feeders, reduce the feeding deviation;
4. General conveyor is supported, so a SMT production line can be setup, which is more time-saving and labor-saving
5. Four placement heads can pick up and calibrate components at one time.
6. The device supports remote system upgrade, NeoDen provides a life long system upgrade service for free to you;

[TheSteve]

Received a package from Neoden yesterday. We installed the new "blow" pump. We also installed a thick rubber mat that was originally missing between the machine and the factory stand. The rubber mat really cut down on the movement of the machine while running. We placed some 0805 and 0603 resistors with excellent results. It gave us enough confidence that we don't plan to use the camera for placing small passives. We did have quite a few mis-picks that we still need to look into.

Beyond that our biggest frustration is the PCB mounting that is used when you don't order the conveyor option. I've attached a picture of how we have to mount a board. If you swap to a different board you'll never get the original board back in the same place. We would really like to see a proper rail on the right side that is never moved. A second adjustable one would be then be used on the left side. This is how the Juki mounted boards, we found it fast, efficient and repeatable.

[mikeselectricstuff]

. It gave us enough confidence that we don't plan to use the camera for placing small passives. We did have quite a few mis-picks that we still need to look into.

Presumably the camera detects the mis-pick and retries ?
Can you select the number of retries before it gives up (e.g. empty or jammed reel, stuck cover tape etc.   ?
Once it gives up does it move on to the next part to try to place all it can, or just stop ?

[rx8pilot]

Beyond that our biggest frustration is the PCB mounting that is used when you don't order the conveyor option. I've attached a picture of how we have to mount a board. If you swap to a different board you'll never get the original board back in the same place. We would really like to see a proper rail on the right side that is never moved. A second adjustable one would be then be used on the left side. This is how the Juki mounted boards, we found it fast, efficient and repeatable.

I designed and machined these PCB pallets for my machine. They are loaded outside the machine and used on static mounts and conveyors. Makes it quite easy to handle the boards and have very repeatable positioning. Accommodates any shape and double sided. Holds edges of PCB so no holes needed.

[TheSteve]

More then anything it just doesn't seem to detect the part is on the nozzle or it isn't picking it up. The feeders are a little on the noisy side compared to the rest of the machine so you can hear to do a double feed really fast if it fails to pick up a part or thinks it failed. We have had it stop with an on screen error and I've needed to manually remove the part from the nozzle. This may just be a vacuum setting that we need to play with further. It is a little tough to know exactly what to set things to though.
It seems they have also changed how fiducials work, they aren't the same as is shown in the training video. When we put our points in the parts placement is not as accurate so something isn't right.
Once we can figure these things out we'll run a production board.

btw, we aren't spending full days on this, just when we have time to get away from the other day to day activities in the shop.

[rx8pilot]

Is there any mention of vacuum verify for part pickup? Its a simple thing to implement and would be a bummer it that was omitted.

For a mis-pick, can you program a dump location?

[Spikee]

I remember seeing pressure sensors in the head from one of the photos

[TheSteve]

The machine does have programmable vacuum detection and a dump location.

[TheSteve]

btw, for those interested in ordering this machine, if you want to use a standard tray and choose the conveyor option keep in mind your maximum board size. You can see the tray uses up quite a bit of bed.

[rx8pilot]

A half tray looks like a good trick to have.

What is your all-in cost to this point?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

[thommo]

TheSteve,

Have you mentioned the issue with the reels not fitting into the rack, without being twisted and distorted, to NeoDen?

I spoke with Haimi from NeoDen, who says she'll look into it for me, and that they haven't experienced this issue with anyone else to date. She wanted some photos to show the problem.

Any chance you can post an image illustrating this?
Is it the small, standard reels you're referring to TheSteve?

I should add that Hiami has been incredibly helpful and responsive to my many queries.

[TheSteve]

TheSteve,

Have you mentioned the issue with the reels not fitting into the rack, without being twisted and distorted, to NeoDen?

I spoke with Haimi from NeoDen who says that know nothing about it, and that they haven't experienced this issue at all. They wanted some photos to show the problem.

Any chance you can post an image illustrating this?

The reels are fine once in but must be distorted a small amount to get them there. The bar that supports the "peel box" is mounted a few mm's too low to allow full clearance. If they haven't noticed then they have never put a reel into the machine. I can probably wedge a reel in there and take a picture tomorrow, its tight enough it will hold the reel in place unless it has really soft plastic. It would be an easy fix for them and just requires a few holes to be drilled in different places. I am sure someone just got the design measurements wrong when they spec'd it.

[NeoDen-Haimi]

Hi Dear All,

Thanks for your attention to our latest pnp machine,NeoDen4.

As for the issue,reels not fitting into the rack,pls refer to attached picture,there are some distance between tape reel and peel system,will not hit peel system.But as for big tape reel,not standard tape reel,can not fitting into ,have to load by external holder.

For each unit,after assemble well,we will test run in factory,and according to customer's feeder configuration,we will load all needed tape reel,some need load full,some load about 20 reels.

On the picture which we took this morning,you can see,many machine on the shelf,some just start to assemble,some are under test (load tape reel).

If any question,welcome send e-mail to us directly,we will try to reply and clear your doubts at our earliest.

Skype:haimi2008

E-mail:haimi@neodentech.com

[NeoDen-Haimi]

sorry,the picture failed upload just now,pls check here

[NeoDen-Haimi]

another two pictures here

[TheSteve]

OK. here are pictures showing the clearance issue. In the first picture you can see where the reel gets pinched (circled in red) when loading it in. In the second shot you can see the amount of distortion to a reel that occurs when it is loaded. It isn't the end of the world but a little more clearance would have been nice.

edit - I should add that by default there are small wires hanging down from the upper white plastic peel boxes(they remove the tape covering) that can get pinched when loading or removing reels. So eventually we expected a wire will get damaged or disconnected. We have carefully tucked the wires out of the way using a thin stick that runs through the wire loops and lifts them up.

[elmood]

It's exciting to think that my machine might be somewhere in that photo above!  I'm hoping to get it within the next few weeks.

My major question is how to best set up jobs for the machine. So far I have software that checks and prepares "build" files for doing PTH assembly... it makes webpages that have build steps shown in the correct order by linking PCB images, placement files and BOM data from a spreadsheet in the project directory. After making notes from the Neoden software tutorials I've been adding an SMT export module that can hopefully prepare all the files for the pnp machine also. Since my parts all come from a common part stock, I want to make a master list of component data (thickness, tape size, etc.) and then have the software assign feeders and nozzles automatically. The key for my operation anyway is to have it easy to change between jobs without a lot of fiddling around with the settings every time. I'd love to see some example files from the machine prior to getting mine.

I'm hoping that once more people in English speaking people have these machines we can all help each other out with tips and tricks. I've only ever seen SMT assembly equipment in factories and never used one of my own.

[Spikee]

Is the machine somewhat easy to use for smaller quantities or is it quite a lot of set up time ?

[Tonny-NeoDen]

Posted by: Spikee
« on: Yesterday at 11:43:02 PM » Insert Quote
Is the machine somewhat easy to use for smaller quantities or is it quite a lot of set up time ?


Hello Sir,
If you can generate the coordinate from your own PCB Design Software,then the programing will be very fast.
As for time of setting up on the machine,you can refer to our Tutorial Videos via below link:
www.youtube.com/user/NeoDentech

More details,pls feel free contact us:
Skype:tonny-neoden
Email:tonny@neodentech.com

[rwb]

Another NeoDen 4 in action video

Looks good to me.

https://youtu.be/Vdg1c-LzkRk

[mikeselectricstuff]

Seems to be pausing for an unnecessarily long time before the camera light comes on - obviously you want some settling time but seems a bit on the long side - presumably this is an end-user adjustable parameter?

[rx8pilot]

Is the machine somewhat easy to use for smaller quantities or is it quite a lot of set up time ?

As a general note on P&P setup:

On my machine (which is a different machine entirely) I have essentially automated the programming to being a trivial amount of time - a few mouse clicks.
Witch that said, it still takes a considerable amount of time to setup a new job. The programming is only a tiny part of the process. Organizing and loading the parts. Adding/tweaking new packages. Verifying pickups and placements. Tracking down mis-picks. None of which is complicated (usually), but when you have a PCB with a bunch of parts and only need to run a small number it sucks. I do a lot of 5-15 piece runs for prototype and specialty boards and the P&P setup dominates the schedule. It only takes one backward diode to ruin your day, so mistakes are hard to tolerate. That means that every detail is checked and checked again to make sure.

In my case, I normally have very few extra parts and no extra PCB's. In a situation where there is low part count, simple designs, and higher volume - the setup is no problem. Small qty PCB assembly is possible, but not easy regardless of what machine you have. To alleviate the pain in my setups, I got a machine that can hold about 125 different parts at a time. This allows me to have many jobs setup at the same time as well is 'squeeze in' a prototype without disturbing the recurring PCB's. The downside is that to afford that many feeders, I had to get an old machine and all the no so good things that come with an old machine.

Anyway, even though the P&P machine is the coolest part of the assembly process, it takes so much more to have an efficient process that actually saves time in the end. For low-volume efficiency, one must be particularly clever with workflow design.

[rx8pilot]

Seems to be pausing for an unnecessarily long time before the camera light comes on - obviously you want some settling time but seems a bit on the long side - presumably this is an end-user adjustable parameter?

Looks like the motion system is at low speed for programming/verify. Maybe that is why the delay is long.

[TheSteve]

Well its Friday but we weren't able to do a production run yet. When we decided we were pretty comfortable with the machines ability to place passives we moved on to our TSSOP28 packaged FL232RL. The machine had no problem picking the part but the camera image was measuring the center incorrectly 20 to 30% of the time. This meant when it placed it it was sometimes a full pin width off in position. After sending pictures of everything to Neoden they suggested we turn the camera flash brightness down. This setting was not obvious as its behind a password protected menu. Turning the brightness down seems to have solved the camera problem. However we are still having a problem with the machine not dropping parts if there is any kind of mis-pick detected. If it was to detect the FT232RL is bad for any reason it will go to the dump area but it doesn't release the part. It will try picking two more times and dumping two more times with the part on the nozzle the entire time. At that point the machine stops with an error and after a few seconds without suction the part falls off the nozzle. Hopefully this is just another configuration issue.

Inside the config screen with the camera flash brightness we also found a camera theta adjustment. It was set to zero from the factory but the FT232RL's it did place were ever so slightly skewed. We added a 0.5 degree shift and they look much better.

We have also found numerous software bugs, the worst of which causes the PC to blue screen.

Now all that said we're very optimistic the machine will work great once fully setup and at the moment all of the software bugs can generally be worked around. Once a few more people have the machine and are reporting issues I can see Neoden making some quick improvements.

Setting up the machine is pretty quick overall once you know the software. Loading/unloading the feeders is very quick and easy too.