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Interested to hear about adding germanium to the solder. What sort of quantity have you added and does it make a big difference to the dross? I'm keen to give it a try if it does. Where do you get it from? I'm not that keen to buy some from ebay, would rather get from a more trustworthy supplier, but it doesn't seem like there really are any!

Cheers

Hi Kobie,

I've had a look through what I've got and it turns out I have a few different versions of a couple of files that may be relevant. I'll attach them all. You will need to rename the one you want to use as "framegrab.dll" and "Pxc2_95.dll" before trying them. They both live in c:\versatronics\rv\

I would also guess that you need to close and re-open the program before trying out a new version.

I dont know anything about what the differences are unfortunately so it will just need to be a try it and see approach!

Alex

Edit: I tried to attach the files - they are only a few hundered kb, but got an error:

There was a problem during the uploading of [filename].
The upload directory is full. Please contact an administrator about this problem.

I'll email them to you directly in the mean time.

Ha! This caught me out again! Glad I noted it down somewhere!

Hi there, I've been trying to get some made for a while, just a case of twisting someone's arm a bit more as I think they are busy on other things! Will let you know if I get any progress

Interesting, I might try this. I was aware that a lot of the slipping was occurring at that end.

I use the orange silicon ones mostly as I find they are a bit more grippy than the shiny black ones, though I have found they do tend to stretch over time whereas the black nitrile ones dont stretch so much but crack and snap instead.

Bit of an odd one this, don't think I've seen it before.

All was going fine, gerber data imported and the board looked as expected until... I dropped the first part (as 1206 capacitor as it happens) and it was tiny! Very confused. Turns out the gerbers had imported something like 40x size which only becomes apparent when you drop a component down onto it.

The board is not one I had designed, and it appears to have been done in Allegro.

Turns out RVgerber doesn't like/understand the FSLAXxxYxx and MOxx commands being combined into one line. No idea if this is legal or not, Presumably Allegro seems to think so and EuroCircuits had no problems displaying or making the boards.

In the offending files the two instructions were combined as:

%FSLAX44Y44*MOMM*%

but to get RVgerber to import correctly at the right size I had to split them into separate lines like this:

%FSLAX44Y44*%
%MOMM*%

Anyway thought it might be worth posting in case anyone else comes across this at some point.

My understanding is that there were very few made, so getting any help or spares might be a challenge.

The machines were the new thing after the RV so from some brief views of the software I think its a but nicer and more rounded. I believe the feeders are the same so thats a blessing and a curse all in one!

Not sure about their operation and overall speed. I'd be surprised if it was significantly faster than an RV particularly considering its using the same feeders anyway. But for me, the main concern would be that there were so few sold getting spares or any knowledge about them is going to be difficult I think.

Ah thanks for the replies, just seen them!

ok wow so you are at 265oC. I'm set to 245oC simply because that was what it was set to when I got it so I had nothing else to go by. I know the solder alloy its got in it melts at 222oC - how does that compare with you?

I use foaming flux that I get from Grove, seems to foam up and coat the board ok. Annoyingly the machine has a huge tank for flux which you have pretty much fill for the foam to be at the right height. Takes about 6-7L.

Speed over the wave you mention is probably fairly similar to what I'm set to. Preheat is just a timed thing so I don't really know what temperature it will be getting to - sits over the heater for perhaps 10 seconds before heading back up over the wave.

If your alloy is melting at a similar temperature to mine then perhaps I should up the temperature a bit for a first test. Its not bridging all pins that are close to each other but there are bridges on all panels in a few places, particularly where there are 0.1" pitch pins. Maybe thats just as good as it gets and I'm expecting a bit too much. Next time I do some panels on it I'll take a couple of photos.

Does anyone have something like this they are either looking to sell or would be happy to loan/run a box of parts through for me?

https://blundell.co.uk/product/e33-1-radial-lead-cutting-machine-2/

I have some HV ceramic capacitors that have come on concertina card tape - 1000 parts. I've already had to de-tape one box and its driving me nuts trying to do it with scissors and keep the cut position anywhere near consistent. Doing them one by one with wire croppers is not an option!

I've got one of these types of machines for doing axial lead parts (resistors etc) but ones for radial leaded parts seem somewhat less common.

I've got a bench-top wave machine and its been a god-send when needed, but I don't use it that often. I was wondering if there are any more regular users of such things out there that could offer some advice about how to reduce bridging between pins. I don't often have the volume of stuff (or the time to experiment when I do sadly) to experiment. I can adjust the speed over the wave, pre-heat time, solder temperature wave height and so on. I've tweaked a couple of things but doesn't seem to have had a noticeable effect either way. I accept its unlikely there is a silver bullet to make them all come out perfect all the time. Should I just accept it does the level of bridging that it does and move on?

This is what it looks like on my machine. Excuse the dust.... it does actually get used quite a lot!

The black part of the arm is correct but the grey part needs to be pointing to the left, maybe more 10 o'clock than 9 o'clock. I can take a photo of my machine on Monday if you need it still by then.

Your "arm park position 1" is actually it's resting position when it's running. When you close the program it goes to 'park' the arm at the back left of the machine, a little forward (towards the user) of the single index slot points you have found for both x and y.

Try moving the arm over there then opening rvplace with a job. Hopefully that will resolve your start up homing problem.

Clearly I haven't looked here for a while! I make new DSP cards and can supply one for £72 if you still need it. Message me if so.

Cheers
Alex

Trying to run RVgerber on this Win10 Laptop to program a job and I got an error on startup saying cw3230.dll was missing. Doesn't seem to be in the original install, or at least not on the machine I copied the software from. For some reason I thought I had come across this before.

Anyway I found a copy (it works) and will attach it here in case anyone else needs it. I just dropped it into the c:\versatronics\rv folder where gerber.exe is.