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Fascinating, I genuinely think bits of that software would have been commercially viable to sell as a standalone product to assist with setting up any pick and place machine. You can see its origins in RVGerber/RVSetup and you can see clear steps forwards.
 
It's a long time ago now, but to my recollection while VSMT went on for a few more years, Qplacer never seemed to get the traction the RV's got and then attention moved Flexiplace and Vivo systems at least one of which it seems was actually a rebadged machine.

I think the numbers of all the post RV machines are very low. I recall being given the contact details of one user to discuss their experience, which was interesting, what they said was not positive.

Most of the Chinese P&Ps seem to offer an electric feeder upgrade/option of some kind. I'm not entirely sure if they are clones or original designs. I suppose Intelligent Drives have an electric feeder on that machine that's reasonably affordable @phonoplug would know more about those, I have no idea if the machine is even still made, the presence of website doesn't always mean much. As mentioned previously the Tronstol S1 also takes little electric feeders in the 150-250GBP kinda range, no idea how easy the protocol would be to hack.

Apparently not quite as stupid a name as ploopy, the RapidFeeder https://www.eevblog.com/forum/manufacture/rapid-feeder-a-new-type-of-smt-feeder/msg3454864/#msg3454864 maybe I was confusing the two.

There is also someone hawking a (possibly kickstarterd) plastic moulded budget feeder they have "designed for openpnp" don't have a link but apparently support is in the openpnp source even if none of these listed here https://openpnp.org/hardware/ is the one I'm thinking of. (think it was on eevblog recently, had a silly name).

On eBay someone in the UK is selling a completely 3d printed feeder..

Or you could try copying that incredibly over enthusiastic kid on youtube... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMf49SMPnhxdLormhEpfyfg

Pretty sure the control interface for the feeders has already been reverse engineered unless the new driver boards used cloned software...

On low end machines, clone Yamaha pneumatic feeders seem the most popular and cheapest, pretty sure they work using electronically activated valves in the mounting rack (which can be found on Ali). The height of any alternative feeder might mean you need to tweak other aspects of the machine or put it in a new enclosure, the standard ones are quite diminutive in that regard. Another option might be feeders for TWS Qwadras (also banks) if you can find them or Dima (I've seen them on eBay) which are a tiny little thing because they don't include any reel holder in the feeder. The NoedenS1/Tronstol A1 from China also has small electronic feeders which I think cost about the same as a Samsung clone. What you certainly don't want is Essemtec CLM, you could buy the machine for the cost of a refurbished 10 lane magazine.

From memory (its been almost 10 years) there are 2 problems with plastic tape - its thin so not exactly clamped down by the top plate or gripped well by those dastardly rubber drive bands & the single pin drives from quite far back.
It is probably possible with a 3d printer or other ingenuity to make a top plate that can in some way push the tape down to the bottom of the groove but the feeders a re fiddly enough to load already and that probably won't help. I don't know how feasible it would be to add more pins to the tape drive mechanism...

No no don't taunt us, this is the one machine on the market where we can see the price new on IDs website. The Vivo branding does date it a bit, what does such a machine become worth after 10 years?

PM'd I don't login often

I can try and remember not to throw some away, how many would you need? There are generally 3 types: a simple tube with deeper sides for the legs to run down, a more complex version with two ridges running down the the inside of the top of the tube that keep the SOIC  straight and the rarest version where the top of the tube has a profile. Do you have a preference? I find the first can allow a chip to rotate in the tube and jam given the chance, the other two don't allow this.

Well its been quite a while since I've been anywhere near one, but presumably you have created custom matrix tray roughly following pages 11+ with reference locations. Then when you setup a job you fill that tray with the requisite part just like any other feeder, trays have a few extra options which are of course a little quirky. IIRC every "pocket" is pretty much a lane so one matrix can have multiple part numbers loaded in it (I can't do that on Essemtec). There's a rotate 180 on refill option to cover the fact the arm might only reach half a tray and so you aren't refilling but turning it round, that option might drive you nuts, it doesn't always seem to do what you expect. Otherwise it should be much like using the other feeders, I'm sure an active user will chime in soon if I've forgotten something key. Otherwise perhaps you could describe exactly where its behaving badly.

The manual http://electricstuff.co.uk/forum/index.php?&topic=170.0 is basically the training they would have given you and fairly comprehensive. There are a few secrets on this forum as well as tools for skipping programming form Gerber data, but I think you might find its simpler than you might imagine.

Hello,
has something come out here after 5 years?

I like the software and hardware of the RV4s quite well and I would like to use them for years to come.
But as I get more and more hardware problems I am looking for an alternative in parallel.
I would prefer to only replace the hardware, but if necessary, I also change everything.

If someone needs help to get ahead, that's not a problem.
I would like to use my machine for a long time!



I know openPNP with GRBL motor drivers.
Logically, you can't just exchange them.
But maybe there is something already in that direction?
Has anyone done anything with it?

If your hardware dies, it seems pretty likely the future is full of those Chinese P&Ps, in many ways the vision equipped ones are better than an RV but the software seems to be pretty horrid and makes you walk through even more hoops than Versatronics does. However there are already considerably more of them out there than there are RVs and there do seem to be whispers of OpenPnP efforts on some of those, many hands make light work and all that - plus the chinese software might catch up.

Moving your data out of an RV isn't really a huge issue. Pretty much all machines basically take the same XYR data you probably started with (or you can extract it from the TFR file) and store it in fairly simple formats. The only things you have to recreate from scratch are package definitions.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Quad-Pick-And-Place/124261845178

Never seen one in person but these have a reputation for being well built workhorses in a neat little package, support of some sort still exists from PPM in the US(who sell new upgraded feeders & updated software) or presumably Tronteq in UK/EU.

Due to the arrival of a much larger Forced Air Convection oven we are parting ways with our 2002 Mekko CR350.
This is a PC controlled 5 zone Infra Red Reflow oven with a heated length of ~1.15metres. Dimensions are 235x60x120CM  LDH. 
3-Phase power.
The cabinet is on castors.
Has been used up until today to reflow lead free PCB assemblies with some restrictions.
Mesh belt conveyor is 300mm wide although in practice the best delta is found in the central 200mm.

£250 or best offers, sold as seen.

I think you might be out of luck there, someone was asking on here about them ages ago, back then I reckoned the only other one out there was with you. Grove certainly had a go at selling one once, maybe that is the same one, or maybe whoever was trying to get rid of it didn't manage and mothballed it.. you never know.

However, sticking with Grove they have two little Essemtecs (one with some carcasses) on there which you could still get serviced etc, miles better than a Q or an RV, KPE/Foreslink could probably find you others too, as the rep/service agents for years they know where they all are. The Dima is also a nice machine but might be a bit harder to get serviced without asking please nicely to Nordson, I don't think there's much UK expertise.

I'm sure someone on here can answer the Eagle half....

Mike has written some tools in VB that generate the placement files for the machine from your CAD softwares output (PCad)
Elsewhere on here I'm pretty sure someone else has done much the same thing with a ULP for eagle... EDIT- In fact its a sticky UP Top^^^
Both of these would automatically get you custom rotations...
And lastly if you are using RVGerber to create your placements it does indeed not immediately appear possible, until you locate the thread on here that mentions a 100% not intuitive keypress that suddenly makes that possible.. good luck! EDIT TaDa! http://electricstuff.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=185.msg1007#msg1007

There is some added risk with SSDs in that Win98 knows NOTHING about TRIM which means the drive won't be able to do its wear levelling properly or at all. Maybe if you disable swap that could mitigate it as there not much disk writing in the machines day to day running. Or how about one of the aforementioned PATA-SATA adaptor cards and a hybrid drive, where (unless I'm mistaken) the drive handles the SSD wear levelling, I would think pretty much the whole system fits in the 8GB cache.
Also don't forget Win98 starts having issues when sporting  512MB+ of ram, some systems that meet the requirements might support & have more than that installed, you can beat it with a stick a little to support more but there is little point.