Hi Glen,
as i wrote before our Vision Placer V3 has Hardware Abstraction Layer build in one file our controller DLL.
This DLL will be open source soon so it is possible to create an interface to any PNP machine on the market.
I understand People like open source software but in my opinion OpenPNP is a very basic software now and I didn't worked with it.
So I can't say it's an improvement because even our standard Chinese software works reliable and stable and has more features than OpenPNP has now.
The only difference is it's open source.
I don't know how precise is the alignment or how reliable is Java software working over time.
I had some experience with MPLAB and HT IDE and it was not really nice.
One of the biggest issues was the performance of JAVA software and the security problems the VM caused on my computers.
TVM920 is closed loop steppers but Charmhigh 930 is not.
This type of closed loop doesn't affect your precision it prevents only step losses and we never had step loss because we used high torque stepper motors.
We use real closed loop on our ball screw spindle and to increase precision VP-3000 has auto calibration feature on position feedback so no alignment needed until the software tells you to adjust the belt tension or replace the belts.
The biggest issue for your TVM920 are the missing linear guides try to move the PNP head up and down and you will see some shaking.
Every start and stop produce this nick down on placement head and this cause placement errors on high speed.
Even our VP-2500DP has better mechanics and costs less.
Yes I know TVM 920 supports feeder cassettes and it has four heads. But did you placed 250000 component's in a year and the mechanics is still well? How about the valves driving the feeder cassettes how many cycles will they remain.
If you use 4 different nozzles in four heads you maybe can use only one head at a time?
We are able to use 6 different nozzles maybe 10 on VP-30XXD because it could be nice to have 2 similar nozzles on both heads.
Software has a support cost, so that it is possible small SMT might consider no software- no support , and less money.
The answer is so simple i protect my IP you do for your development too?
If you sell your products to market did you open everything for customers?
We sell a out of the box working system and most of my customer dislike to rework the software interface to get the PNP running.
I supply updates free of charge but sure we sell software instead of sharing it to hundreds of competitors.
Glen I wish you all the best for your great work and hope everything will be fine next year too.