Messages

Mike, how is the OTF camera performing with the white led upgrade?

Huge improvement - almost never need to tweak thresholds now, and pretty much unaffected by all but direct sunlight.

Just finished a large-ish job with twenty 8mm lanes and no slips at all - roughing up the pulleys has shown a definite improvement over previous performance.

I also wonder if a couple of tight-fitting 1mm o-rings round the pulleys might help.

So once again getting frustrated about how often the cover tape wasn't quite pulling hard enough, I had a close look at what was happenning - I'd always assumed the main issue was the belt slipping on the tape.
However I noticed that in some cases it was actually the belt slipping on the take-up reel pulley.
I've roughed up the pulley inner surface, using a needle file mounted in my pillar drill, and this seems to have made a noticeable improvement.
(I use the orange belts from polymax, which seem to be better than the black ones)

Thread on EEVBLOG on this machine - a couple of users now have these machines
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/manufacture/neoden-yy1-pick-and-place-machine-with-under-$3k-price-for-hobbiestlow-vol-usag/msg4292275/#msg4292275

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004587777050.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.721c6d8bw165km&algo_pvid=4462904b-f71f-4f43-9c85-19923949e18c&algo_exp_id=4462904b-f71f-4f43-9c85-19923949e18c-8&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22sku_id%22%3A%2212000029733487900%22%7D&pdp_npi=2%40dis%21GBP%212436.03%212436.03%21%21%21%21%21%402100bde316594280863917280e53c3%2112000029733487900%21sea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpelBwOVKMY

Looks interesting - some nice features for low-volume users:
Bulk feeder - would be interesting to see how well this works in practice
Decent 315x350+mm board area ( if only one feeder bank in use)
Tool changing, which is an essential feature lacking in many low-end machines, 3 + 1 nozzles is just about enough.


The only thing I'd have liked to have seen is a flying camera option for part vision, as this would improve speed considerably for relatively low cost
Also the option to take a few Yamaha feeders for high-quantity parts would be nice

Some things I'd like to see in more detail:
Feeder loading procedure
How do the feeders pull the cover tape
Feeder options for wider/deeper tapes

Is the speed shown in the videos the maximum speed ? It does look a little slow - the 3000cph claim looks suspect

Can you run feeder.exe on a different PC to the one with the RV software installed ?

would be much easier to run it from an laptop on the workbench

Chris

Yes, though ISTR it only supports a few low-numbered COM ports (1-2 or 1-4), so may need some fiddling in Device Manager if using USB-serials etc.

Bit hard to get pics in-situ.
Black tape around is same as on original

Also - if you take off the mirror assembly, after replacing it, do a camera centre adjust in factory setting (Put tool 5 on the nozzle by hand), as any slight change in mirror position makes a noticeable difference to accuracy.
I realised this when I noticed there was a placement offset between parts placed using the fixed and flying cameras.

I just got round to upgrading the lighting on the RV4 flying camera - the old one was starting to get really picky on ambient light levels as the LEDs degraded. It got to the point where a difference of 5 either way on the threshold made the difference between recognising or not. 

All I can say is WOW what a difference - now it just works all the time, whether or not it's sunny outside, or whether the LED tape I put inside the frame is on or off.

The original light is a pair of white acrylic blocks with three 3mm red LEDs down holes in the back. I didn't have any 3mm whites to hand so made a small board with a strip of SMD white LEDs and a 1mm white acrylic diffuser. This is a bit more uniform than the original, but don't know if this is much of a factor.
I then put a neutral-density filter (grey tint acrylic) over the camera to desensitise it.
The factory settings mode allows the camera to be viewed, with thresholding on or off. I set the LED current to get a clean thresholded image image with a threshold value of 220

I think Rv1 is a rather different machine, ISTR it uses DOS based software (not certain, may be thinking of rv placer)and not compatible with 1S afaik. Feeders are the same or similar tho.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/buysellwanted/fs-zevatech-570-placement-machine-fully-working-with-feeders-uk/msg3874046/?topicseen#msg3874046

May be the same issue I've observed, where you get fine horizontal stripe offsets, i.e. each alternate line has a fixed offset. I'm pretty sure this is to do with interlacing on the camera, the image grabber picking the wrong pair of fields to make a frame.
I've found that being consistent in the way you power up fixes it 100% - PC power on, then RV power on a few secs later.

I am not sure why they felt the need to move the tape so quickly though.

For multiple feeds perhaps.

From memory ISTR the transformer has 2 windings in series - could it be as simple as just using one winding to reduce the voltage? I would think the stepper would be OK with the reduced voltage with speed ramping and the smoother control the Trinamic driver gives.