Messages

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.
 

Storage limits updated - please upload any drivers etc. that might be useful.

The only difference between the RV1s and the RV4s is that the RV4s has the flying camera for faster vision of smaller parts, otherwise everything is the same.

On an old machine you will probably need to replace all the feeder belts, while you're at it get new O-rings for the nozzle and tools.
Give the feeders a good clean (but do NOT use oil on the pins as paper dust will turn to sludge).

Put some grease on the Z rack & pinion - everything else should be fine as there are so few moving parts
 
The only documentation is the stuff in the documentation post pinned in the software section. Basic operation isn't that hard - shouldn't take more than a day or two to get it doing something useful.

I'd be interested to see some pics of the QPlacer internals - mostly just curiosity, but might be of interest to anyone else that comes across one, not that there are likely to be many ou there.
 

I don't know anything about Qplacer but Wouldn't sueprise me if there are similarities to the earlier RV1s/4s so could be worth looking through the documenation for that

Happy to share stl files if anyone interested in them.

yes please!

Hmm - I just did a teardown of some biotech gear with 20 solenoid valves inside, could come in handy....

I bought a CL feeder a while ago to look at - would be interested to see your mounting details.
 

I think the only permanent place to edit the feeder indexes is in teh .fdr files, which is a pain - one of the few really dumb design decisions - they should always have been in the CDF as they depend mostly on componant size.

As regards  W98 crashing, adding more RAM might help - ISTR having some issues a while ago that were fixed this way

Received the parts -  was puzzled for a while as they came with no info & took a while to realise what this seemingly random box of bits even was, as it was a while since I ordered!
Having remembered, it then took a while to find any info on assembly as I couldn't remember where I'd found out about it & for some reason it wasn't in my Aliexpress order history.
Haven't got around to doing anything with it since...

Interesting - I've bought a couple to play with

Hi Mike

You can set a useable area but I do not know if that is any more than a rectangular size or if with SCARA there is more complex configuration.

Scara has an inherently non-rectangular working area - the RV software has some maps in config files somewhere showing valid positions in a 1" grid.
The way the machine is laid out, it is necessary to be able to access pretty much anywhere that's physically reachable, and that adds the complication that some moves need to be split to avoid moving through unreachable areas

The motion geometry would be taken care of by the motion controller board; the Duet3D XD in this case. You would feed it x and y co-ords and it would move I think.

Also, it would need to deal with the very unusual 5-phase steppers that the RV uses - for that reason alone I think you'd be stuck with the original Sanyo drivers and PSU box.
If you can ignore the duet3d onboard drivers and get step/direction signals that took the SCARA stuff into account, you could feed these to the original drivers, it would just have slightly different scaling. 

This is something I found on setting up the board for SCARA. It is related to a 3d printer but the movements are what's important. OpenPNP takes care of the rest.

But what about the fact that the fid camera has an angular offset from the head centre which depends on the position? I think  you'd need to reference the output of the SCARA processing to be able to claculate this.

I find the RV so frustrating at times. Today I built some boards and after about 20 the vision on a couple of parts had changed a bit. It started the day fine and the light was constant through out the morning. I just never know when I will get an issue.

I found that doing the lighting upgrades described elsewhere completely fixed all the vision issues I ever had, particularly the sensitivity to ambient light.  Literally anything from indirect sunlight to artificial light makes zero difference now. It also happily tolerates all the LED tape I've put inside and on the head, which used to cause position-sensitive issues for the flying cam.
Seriously this is the about best upgrade you can do, second only to using the gamepad for manual control.

Plus the feeders are a pain.

no argument there..!
TBH If I were to spend more time improving my machine, I'd be looking at adapting Yamaha or similar "big boy" feeders

Then the waffle trays forget the orientation sometimes and you have to refill and rotate 2 or 3 times before it sorts itself out again.

I've never seen that, as long as you remember to answer "no" to the rotate prompt when refilling, though I don't use trays very often

You cant go lower than 0603 and fine pitch is really tricky.

OpenPnP isn't going to fix that either - I'm certain this is a limitation of the mechanics, though higher-res imaging may make a small improvement. I have done dense 0402 LED arrays on occasion, but that's very much an "on a good day, with the right phase of the moon" sort of thing.

Then the issues with the screen going funny.

Annnoying but minor as there is an easy and quick fix for that without having to go through the homing again - just load any other job file, ignore feeder warnings and reload the original file & you're back in business in a few seconds.

I agree that there are a number of annoyances, but I'm sure the process of getting it to work with different hardware/software would be at least as time-consuming & annoying !

Yes, it is a SCARA type geometry
Aside from the presumed need for calibration, I wonder if it would cope with:
The position-dependent offset between the fid cam and the head
The constraints on reachable area including having to do some moves in two stages
The on-the-fly vision of the RV4.

Apart from a handful of annoyances, the existing software is sufficiently useable that a major change like this would be a ton of work for questionable benefit.

Out of curiosity I tried printing Tool 1 in PLA on my Bambu X1.
Finest profile ( 0.08mm layer) , with support, 0.4mm nozzle.
Looks pretty useable with a little clean-up, would need the hole drilling (or melt a stainless syringe needle through). Would definitely need the brass ring.
Support was definitely needed, and wasn't hard to remove

Tip maybe on the large side, but using a stainless dispensing needle could be a solution to that

Probably more durable in nylon or PLA-CF, but seems strong enough to be useable in PLA

I'm not familar with resin printers, but I suspect these may need some tapering on the internal horizontal surface to avoid the need for support.