Low Cost Pick and Place Machine

[ProtoVoltaics]

Just a few days off from the World Maker Faire in NYC! We are very excited to be going. We have been making a lot of progress since the Orlando Faire! The new cameras we are using don't have lights on them, so we had to add in a ring light. We can do a lot more with these new cameras, and adding a ring light in wasn't too much work.

If you are in the New York area please look into attending the faire, even if you don't stop by our booth!

[Godzil]

Wow I love your PnP machine, just to expensive for me, but I like it

By the way, is there any PnP machine using parallel arms instead of serial like this one?

[ProtoVoltaics]

Wow I love your PnP machine, just to expensive for me, but I like it

By the way, is there any PnP machine using parallel arms instead of serial like this one?

I believe you are referring to mike's machine? Our machine is a cartesian, gantry robot.

The serial PnP is really cool I agree. I have not seen a parallel PnP robot.

[eneuro]

By the way, is there any PnP machine using parallel arms instead of serial like this one?

Do you mean something like this one from this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_manipulator ?


I develop similar robot to this ultra fast PnP and this week testing my spot welder to use braze welding to connect different parts of my machine made of different materials (metals) 
EEvblog: Cheap recognition & pick & place & reflow oven solder machine for tiny PCBs



More progress will be reported in this thread and on my YT robot channel soon-waiting for approval for AdSense, etc...to be able maybe monetize those videos 
When, you follow those videos and buy a few parts manufactured by my team and you will be able assembly yourself such robot.
It will be very cheap thanks to simple mechanics  and advanced image processing

I'll send links to this online PnP robot build course with detailed instructions howto assembly and make DIY made at home PnP  for pennies

[mikeselectricstuff]

Maybe you could do a P&P based on this principle....

[ProtoVoltaics]

We are back now and we had a lot of fun at the World Maker faire! We got to meet Juha (makes Liteplacer) whose machine has been shown on EEVblog. We got interviewed by EDN, Silhouette and more. We will post links to those interviews as soon as we are allowed.

We had a lot of interest in the machine from academic institutions and small/large businesses, all of which are unable to spend funds on backing KickStarter campaigns. Due to the large amount of interest we had at the faire we will be selling the pnp as a product even if the KS goes unfunded.

If anyone has interest in the machine and is unable to use KS to purchase a unit we ask that you please email ryan.riegel@protovoltaics.com for more info.

[ProtoVoltaics]

We have a lot of people interested in purchasing a machine, one of which requires us to prove our worth, and we always like a good challenge!  To meet the expectations of the customer we have to add several new features. These new features will include the ability to place double sided boards and to have a "vibrafeed" for parts that come in tube trays. Both of which shouldn't be too hard to add.

We are working on getting this done ASAP! We are also making improvements to the error detection. Soon we will be able to tell much earlier if we had a part pick up failure.

Lastly, we are making changes to some areas of our computer vision. When all of this is done we will be able to reduce set up times drastically. Setting up these machines has always been the biggest headache, and we think we have the solution for it.

[eneuro]

Setting up these machines has always been the biggest headache, and we think we have the solution for it.

"Huston we have a problem"  Your machine is still under heavy development and it was not in production use even few months a few hours a day, 7 days a week, etc, so your customer will pay for... tests which they will make themself
It is acceptable in DIY homemade thing for own use since it costs a few times less money, but you want deliver "soon" (next year maybe?) something which will fail so many times, that it is a risk to assembly reliable many boards.

BTW: Which is acceptable mismatch error rates in such machines in production? How much percentage of PnP parts can be thrown to the bin- 1% or more? 

[mikeselectricstuff]

To meet the expectations of the customer we have to add several new features. These new features will include the ability to place double sided boards and to have a "vibrafeed" for parts that come in tube trays. Both of which shouldn't be too hard to add.

Are you saying you didn't realise these were essential requirements from the start ..?

[ProtoVoltaics]

Setting up these machines has always been the biggest headache, and we think we have the solution for it.

"Huston we have a problem"  Your machine is still under heavy development and it was not in production use even few months a few hours a day, 7 days a week, etc, so your customer will pay for... tests which they will make themself
It is acceptable in DIY homemade thing for own use since it costs a few times less money, but you want deliver "soon" (next year maybe?) something which will fail so many times, that it is a risk to assembly reliable many boards.

BTW: Which is acceptable mismatch error rates in such machines in production? How much percentage of PnP parts can be thrown to the bin- 1% or more? 

Can you tell me what will "fail so many times"?

The idea is to prove to the customer we can do the job they need to do. They say we need it to do this, and we prove we can do what is needed. They do not pay for this.

We have been using the machine to build our boards for only 1 month, correct, but I'm not sure why this matters. We are at a point where the product is marketable. We are marketable because we have features that others currently do not, in our price range, but also because we can place accurately as seen from our videos. Also, we have many error checks to make sure boards get put together reliably.

We are making deliveries this December of this year.

A good project is always under heavy development. A project that you care about should never be complete, but should always evolve otherwise someone else will pass you up.

Not sure where you come up with your facts, but I can assure you not many have been correct so far. 

[ProtoVoltaics]

To meet the expectations of the customer we have to add several new features. These new features will include the ability to place double sided boards and to have a "vibrafeed" for parts that come in tube trays. Both of which shouldn't be too hard to add.

Are you saying you didn't realise these were essential requirements from the start ..?

No, I am not saying that.

I'm saying we currently need the vibrafeed, and it's our next step. I don't know of any machines in our range that have modular feeders let alone vibrafeed so, I believe we are in a good position with our advancements. Also, doing double sided boards isn't hard just part of the list of requirements the customer had.

[mikeselectricstuff]

We have been using the machine to build our boards for only 1 month, correct, but I'm not sure why this matters.

It matters because people spending on a P&P, even a cheap-ish one, want to know that it will be reliable over time.
A bad pick/place has the ability to waste a lot of time and money - buying from an unknown manufacturer, a machine that has only had a few months' run-time is a big risk.
How many thousand hours' run-time will you have by the time you start shipping?
How many thousand reels have you run through your feeders so far to test long-term wear?

[MattFL]

To meet the expectations of the customer we have to add several new features. These new features will include the ability to place double sided boards and to have a "vibrafeed" for parts that come in tube trays. Both of which shouldn't be too hard to add.

Are you saying you didn't realise these were essential requirements from the start ..?

No, I am not saying that.

I'm saying we currently need the vibrafeed, and it's our next step. I don't know of any machines in our range that have modular feeders let alone vibrafeed so, I believe we are in a good position with our advancements. Also, doing double sided boards isn't hard just part of the list of requirements the customer had.

I'm jumping around here so my apologies if I missed something significant; but from my seat, I don't think vibra feed or double sided capabilities are "requirements" for a low end P&P machine.  We've got one we use for prototyping and small production runs, it only works with single sided boards and does not have vibra feed, but it gets the job done for us.  Of course the PCB's are all our own so we can design as required for our P&P machine, if you're trying to populate other peoples PCB's then that's a whole other issue.  For IC's that don't come in a reel, we get them in trays.  If they're in tubes then we manually transfer them to trays (not ideal, but we're only doing small runs).  The trays sit next to our PCB's on the P&P machine, and it picks them from the trays.  For prototyping and small runs of our own PCB's this is fine. 

[mikeselectricstuff]

To meet the expectations of the customer we have to add several new features. These new features will include the ability to place double sided boards and to have a "vibrafeed" for parts that come in tube trays. Both of which shouldn't be too hard to add.

Are you saying you didn't realise these were essential requirements from the start ..?

No, I am not saying that.

I'm saying we currently need the vibrafeed, and it's our next step. I don't know of any machines in our range that have modular feeders let alone vibrafeed so, I believe we are in a good position with our advancements. Also, doing double sided boards isn't hard just part of the list of requirements the customer had.

I'm jumping around here so my apologies if I missed something significant; but from my seat, I don't think vibra feed or double sided capabilities are "requirements" for a low end P&P machine.  We've got one we use for prototyping and small production runs, it only works with single sided boards and does not have vibra feed, but it gets the job done for us.  Of course the PCB's are all our own so we can design as required for our P&P machine, if you're trying to populate other peoples PCB's then that's a whole other issue.  For IC's that don't come in a reel, we get them in trays.  If they're in tubes then we manually transfer them to trays (not ideal, but we're only doing small runs).  The trays sit next to our PCB's on the P&P machine, and it picks them from the trays.  For prototyping and small runs of our own PCB's this is fine.

Even a cheap P&P is a significant investment, and it's already trying to hit a very small market segment (which is probably why nobody has yet done a decent job of it) so if it has unnecessary limitations, ones that aren't difficult to avoid, it can only reduce the potential market further.
Designing a P&P with a board support system that can't do double-sided would be crazy.
Chips, especially at the lower volumes a low-end machine is aimed at commonly come in tubes, so not supporting these is a significant limitation.

[MattFL]

Ok I was having a brain fart. I didn't even realize there was a p+p that wouldn't let you manually flip the board over. I was thinking you meant some sort of automatic solution.  Time to catch up on sleep over here.

[rx8pilot]

We have been using the machine to build our boards for only 1 month, correct, but I'm not sure why this matters.

It matters because people spending on a P&P, even a cheap-ish one, want to know that it will be reliable over time.
A bad pick/place has the ability to waste a lot of time and money - buying from an unknown manufacturer, a machine that has only had a few months' run-time is a big risk.
How many thousand hours' run-time will you have by the time you start shipping?
How many thousand reels have you run through your feeders so far to test long-term wear?

+1 On that.

I have a small biz that fairly recently transitioned into electronics. I looked at any/all options for P&P to do prototypes and small runs. The entry level machines scared me away because I was not confident in them. I ended up spending only slightly more than what this machine costs plus some elbow grease and I now have a proven commercial machine that is reliable and fast (enough).  Reliability was probably my number one requirement in the end. I could not risk missing a delivery because the P&P machine took a dump.

Just a perspective from someone that is probably your target audience.

[Kjelt]

I talked to a pro fab here in town and they spent easily big amounts on their machines just that if they run into problems, within 8 hours there is a technician resolving the issue.
That is what they pay for, to keep downtime to a minimum. They have some machines even redundant so they can switch if one fails. If the machine runs out of service (no longer maintainable) they write them off and replace them.

But that is not the market for this machine now is it?
So any business buying such a machine esp in a different country must realize:
- they have to maintain the machine themselves because there is not service organisation nearby
- that it can be down for at least 48 hours which it will take to ship the replacement parts by courier and repair and test.

If they can not afford that then they should buy redundant machines or search elsewhere.
Just my two cents.

[ProtoVoltaics]

I agree, we aren't Manncorp or Samsung.

Our machine was made because we needed it to build the boards we sell on our website, because we have too many to place by hand, and not enough to ship out to China. We are actually the first customer of our machine, the whole purpose of this project was to have a pnp for ourselves.

Also, when we build something we don't build it with limitations. First we get it to work, then we improve on that. We didn't just say, "We aren't going to support that feature." It's just the next feature in line to add.

The machines aren't out in the wild yet, so we are trying to gather valuable feedback to make the machines as good as possible before they ship out. We have had some luck here with feedback, and for that we are very thankful.

[rx8pilot]

I am not at all trying to be discouraging and I think I understand what you are doing. All I am trying to do is provide the perspective that many/most will have when looking for a P&P machine. It means that they are in a business, not a hobby anymore. Downtime can easily exceed the cost of a few machines. I had looked at the TM240 and thought to myself, how bad could it be? It's about $6k I think.

The scenario that scared me was this.....

Customer: "We would like to order 25 of your awesome product, but we need it next week. Can you do it?"
Me: "Great, of course we can. I just got a new automatic PCB assembly machine."

I buy all the parts and prep all the mechanics. Customer is now counting on a delivery and has stopped looking for any other alternatives. P&P gets crazy and I spend a number of hours troubleshooting. I discover that it is crazy because something is broken. To set up and hand place the PCB's will add a week to the delivery but the customers job will suffer greatly. They cancel the order that is worth 2x the cost of the TM240 and tell everyone in the industry that I am an idiot.

Its only a made up scenario, but not unrealistic. Your customers will have something similar in the back of their minds when they are looking for a P&P. There are various degrees of that. Even if it is just for prototypes, the schedule will be based on the machine working and when it does not, it can take a lot of time to either hand place or outsource. This is especially true if you are not setup for it.

Just think about how you may handle that line of questions when it comes up - could make a huge difference in how many you sell. The LitePlacer one is in reach of the hobbyist, who have time to tinker and fiddle with it. At $6k, your machine is beyond a hobby but very inexpensive compared to commercial P&P machines.

[Fungus]

P&P gets crazy and I spend a number of hours troubleshooting. I discover that it is crazy because something is broken. To set up and hand place the PCB's will add a week to the delivery but the customers job will suffer greatly.

Think of hard disks: The 'I' in RAID stands for 'inexpensive'. People figured out that reliability comes from redundancy, not from buying very expensive disks.

Any machine can have problems. It's safer to buy three cheap P&P machines and have one standing idle for emergencies than to buy one expensive machine that the whole company depends on.

Smaller machines can also be a good way to scale your production capacity as demand grows - you can still handle small jobs while the big jobs are running in the background.

They cancel the order that is worth 2x the cost of the TM240 and tell everyone in the industry that I am an idiot.

You're not an idiot for using a TM240, you're an idiot for not having a backup plan when one fails.

At $6k, your machine is beyond a hobby but very inexpensive compared to commercial P&P machines.

The price doesn't really matter if it earns money.

The question is whether it does what you need - is it accurate enough, does it have enough feeds, etc.?

[ProtoVoltaics]

I am not at all trying to be discouraging and I think I understand what you are doing. All I am trying to do is provide the perspective that many/most will have when looking for a P&P machine. It means that they are in a business, not a hobby anymore. Downtime can easily exceed the cost of a few machines. I had looked at the TM240 and thought to myself, how bad could it be? It's about $6k I think.

The scenario that scared me was this.....

Customer: "We would like to order 25 of your awesome product, but we need it next week. Can you do it?"
Me: "Great, of course we can. I just got a new automatic PCB assembly machine."

I buy all the parts and prep all the mechanics. Customer is now counting on a delivery and has stopped looking for any other alternatives. P&P gets crazy and I spend a number of hours troubleshooting. I discover that it is crazy because something is broken. To set up and hand place the PCB's will add a week to the delivery but the customers job will suffer greatly. They cancel the order that is worth 2x the cost of the TM240 and tell everyone in the industry that I am an idiot.

Its only a made up scenario, but not unrealistic. Your customers will have something similar in the back of their minds when they are looking for a P&P. There are various degrees of that. Even if it is just for prototypes, the schedule will be based on the machine working and when it does not, it can take a lot of time to either hand place or outsource. This is especially true if you are not setup for it.

Just think about how you may handle that line of questions when it comes up - could make a huge difference in how many you sell. The LitePlacer one is in reach of the hobbyist, who have time to tinker and fiddle with it. At $6k, your machine is beyond a hobby but very inexpensive compared to commercial P&P machines.

We are in a similar boat business wise. We do prototyping and have a few specific boards that have been quite successful. A lot of these questions we ask ourselves already, as we are in the position of needing the machine to operate, and it's our neck on the line. We fully understand that position of thinking.

We also looked at the TM220 and 240, but when we were watching Ian's (dangerous prototypes) video review of the product, we knew it wasn't right for us. We looked at other small footprint machines such as the Manncorp FVX, and it was just way our of our price range. We decided we'd build one.

On the point of the machine breaking. I'm not sure what you mean by breaking, but that can happen to any machine unfortunately.

One of the interested parties I've been talking to uses an archaic Manncorp machine that runs on old DOS. He said the longest he can get away from baby sitting it is 80 seconds, and that's when he takes his bathroom break! This is his man reason for wanting multiple of our units for back ups.

[ProtoVoltaics]

The price doesn't matter. The question is whether it does what you need - is it accurate enough, does it have enough feeds, etc.?

This is our main goal. To find what people like rx8pilot (our target audience) need in a machine. Not to single you out rx8pilot but when looking at the machine what do you need that isn't currently there.

[rx8pilot]

You're not an idiot for using a TM240, you're an idiot for not having a backup plan when one fails.

The problem in my particular case is that the backup plans almost always take too long. This is why I got a machine in house. The parts are generally built on demand and the schedules are tight and cannot be negotiated since they are tied to other immovable schedules up the food chain. The problem is a whole gaggle of smaller problems that do not have a concrete answer.

On something like a TM240, it can throw down 0805's super fast but will fail on the .4mm parts, the 56mm tape parts, heavy inductors, etc. To me, it could only be good for simple stuff even if the reliability was great.

The selling point on my Quad was that it is a long proven design that can run 24hrs a day if needed. In my case, probably never but it says a lot for the reliability. Any part can be fed by any method and there are a lot of them. Tapes, strips, trays, etc. I can have about 120 different parts setup at a time which means that I can do all my boards including a couple of prototypes without any changes to the machine setup.

All parts are no more than a day away, although they are not cheap. There are lots of nozzle choices.

This is our main goal. To find what people like rx8pilot (our target audience) need in a machine. Not to single you out rx8pilot but when looking at the machine what do you need that isn't currently there.

To be honest, I have been speaking in concepts only because just got my old Quad up and running. At the moment, not in the market unless the Quad explodes. If I was looking, I would hope for.....

>1000cph
walk-away reliability
.4mm pitch (all day long)
0201
reasonably easy setup changes - adding parts, trays, etc.
finely adjustable Z - which has been very important in my application with tall caps, inductors next to 0402's
global and local fiducial support
ability to take panels and odd shape routed PCB's
Ease of use appropriate for a modestly skilled employee to setup and operate. (needing a super-star engineer to operate/monitor is no good)

While I understand it is low-cost, I have learned over the years that the acquisition cost is many times the smallest number in the total cost equation. All of my business endeavors have been equipment intensive and in the 7 figure cost range. In all the cases, labor needed to keep them busy over the useful life was much more that the purchase price. Now I look very closely at what it will cost to operate in both direct and indirect costs. The Quad is easy enough and reliable enough that I do not have a dedicate person, and probably wont for a while. It is too easy (although it was a major pain to get it going).

[ProtoVoltaics]

I know you just got a machine not trying to push a sale just looking for the feedback. 

Much appreciated!

[Fungus]

On something like a TM240, it can throw down 0805's super fast but will fail on the .4mm parts, the 56mm tape parts, heavy inductors, etc. To me, it could only be good for simple stuff even if the reliability was great.

Those are good reasons for not buying one. Not because it might be unreliable.