Messages

I have 2 vision cards available - £25 each to cover my time testing them, + postage at cost.

I have the following in untested as-is condition - will definitely need belts and probably a bit of cleaning etc. Collection Loughton, Essex, or shipping at cost.
Also loads of feeder cables

10x8mm - 5 off
5x8 + 3x12 1 off
3x23mm 1 off
Vib 2 off

I've just been given a big pile of random RV stuff - an incomplete RV1, a possibly complete RV4s, feeders, cables etc.
I'll be keeping a few select bits for myself as parts and possibly trying to get the RV4S going.
Let me know if there are any specific parts anyone is interest in, free for collection Loughton Essex, or shipping at cost for smaller bits
 

I think most users disabled the cabinet switch as it's too annoying. I'm told it can be useful to be able to manually operate though, as it slows down some operations, making debugging easier.
If I recall correctly, the cabinet switch connects via a DIN plug into the base. 

BTW I did manage to do a temporary repair to my hybrid when it died  could be useful to get you going again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGqH8LGjZdY

Yes I still have a few of them - new old stock. Paypal me £20 each  inc. shipping to mike@whitewing.co.uk 
Probably worth trying swapping the  X and Y Drivers to confirm it's that, but check the wiring for shorts first.
I don't know what killed the one that died on me but not had any issues since.
 

On a similar subject - after my near-disaster with mains on the feeder serial port, I've just been going through & testing all the various spare bits I have, and noticed that some of the caps on the PC motherboard were bulging.
Not only that, the ones on the identical unused spare motherboard I had were the same!
3300uf caps, measured 1-15uF.
No obvious ill-effects but seemed prudent to replace them.

RV4s on Craigslist, NE London
https://london.craigslist.org/app/d/london-versatronics-rv4s-pick-and-place/7839766605.html

[I assume there is some way to get the RV to not use the DSP card ports and use the PC ones - anyone know details]

So after a 2AM repair session to get the machine working for a job that _HAS_ to be done over this weekend....

I discovered what an utterly  terrible idea it was to mix mains and RS232 on the feeder connectors.
Job was all set up for PCBs arriving next day, decided to move a feeder, and suddenly, all feeders not working.
I figured it would be a serial port issue, ran feedertest on a laptop to verify the feeders were OK, then troubleshooting the dead PC serial port.

Mine is the type that has the two COM ports on the DSP board, and instead of proper UARTs, they use 87C51 microcontrollers for some bizarre reason. For a 9600 baud tx-only interface FFS - what planet were they on?
It took out not only the RS232 driver but this MCU. Luckily I had a pile of scrap boards ( Thanks Cubik!), and I got one to work with armtest, verifying that it had a good MCU for COM1.
All the DSP boards I had which didn't hang the PC seemed to have the same fault, so clearly a definite issue.

One thing I found - the feedertest utility doesn't seem to work through the DSP board UARTS - I initially tried to bypass the DSP board and run via the PC COM ports - I had feedertest running via the PC COM port but not in RVPlace. I'm not sure if the ports on the DSP even act like normal COM ports.

I assume there is some way to get the RV to not use the DSP card ports and use the PC ones - anyone know details ?
I was getting too desperate and sleep-deprived to wait through yet more WIN98 reboots to experiment.

I can't understand why they did the feeders like this - only one ever needs power at a time so a 24V supply from the main box would have been a much better solution - cheaper, safer and would allow cheaper connectors. Not to mention using RS232 and +/- supplies for the receivers when RS422 would have actually used fewer wires and no need for oddball bipolar supplies.
I guess there is probably some history there but it boggles the mind how they came up with such an obviously terrible design given that the rest of the machine is pretty reasonable.

I've now put a local mains power switch in line with the feeder cable, and a tranzorb on the serial line.

Rant over...

In RV Setup, create & save a feeder type, passive with the  pitch and #slots required.
Then create & save an instance of that feeder.
Add that feeder to the job, and place it in a centre location
Fill the first slot with the part.
I'm not sure of the "official" way to fill the rest of the slots, which is why I made my "fillfeeder" utility which will copy the first slot to the rest ( need to exit RV Setup to use this)

In the part cdf, select "lock X" and "Lock Y", which stops it adjusting the pick position based on vision results

I've noticed that for some reason you sometimes see duplicate feeders after adding passive types, not sure why this happens, and I don't do it often enough to remember if this causes issues, but it usually works out OK.


 

If they look OK I'd leave them for now - don't think I've ever seen anyone reporting belt issues.

TBH I'd question whether an OpenPNP port is worth the effort - the inverse kinematics for the RV are very non-trivial, e.g. there are some motion paths that need to be split into two moves due to the limits of the geometry.

Then you have the issue that the downward camera has an angular offset from the head which varies with arm position, and of course part rotation also varies with position.
The original developers needed a machine grid calibration to get enough accuracy.
And even if you get all that sorted the feeders are a bit crap.

An interesting project if you have time to burn, but you easily could end up with something that isn't quite accurate enough to be useful for anything.

I think there may be some partial wiring diagrams here somewhere.
Both boards have serial interfaces- not sure if they share the same serial bus. Don't think I've seen command docs but pretty sure the comms are very simple - a byte or two in each direction.
There is a utility in the standard install called armtest.exe that allows testing of the functions of these boards. 

Simple spacer to allow 16mm lanes to be used with 12mm tape

Here's a longer version of the corner for when the PCB is hanging over the left edge of the bed..

I have a small stock of the hybrids on the Sanyo drivers if anyone needs them - they seem to be pretty reliable though - I had one die a long timne ago, possibly due to shorted wiring.