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Taking your lead I decided to try and sort out the one of my machines with the fid problem.

First issue was that the lens had dropped off the end of the camera inside the housing !

Sorted that and of course the offsets were then way out

since I've never altered the actual calibration settings

I spent several hours yesterday working out what the offsets should be.

The calibration isn't spot on, but I've split the difference and it is now within 8 steps at the edges of my working area (only about 150mm square)

That will do for now until someone comes up with a loaner calibration grid !

I can't offer any help as I have the same problem !

The machine I have where the camera is not set up properly, places components perfectly accurately if the fiducials are set manually by aligning the nozzle over the fid by eye, so I imagine the basic grid calibration must be in the ballpark.

but I wonder if it would be worth folks that have a correctly calibrated fiducial camera, posting the offsets and what the camera axis is aligned to (rotationally)

I tried guessing the offset, but it didn't seem to respond logically, so perhaps it is the camera rotational setting at fault.

It can't be rocket science !

Hi
I just bought 2 RV4S machines and they come with windows 95 and I wanted to update on windows 98SE for USB support. Also it has the software version 3.1 and wanted to update to 3.5. Do you have any suggestions/advice? There is anything which needs special attentions?

Thank you
Laurian

My experiences with upgrading machines in the past (not specifically versatronics)
would suggest getting the machines working to some extent before upgrading the software
That way, if you get issues, you will know they are specifically due to the software and not hardware issues.

For example, a simple thing like a worn belt will prevent proper homing

Yep, same here

I already have two RV4s's,  can't really justify another 2   

No connecttion to me, but just spotted   on eBay 

Two off  RV4s   + feeders

buy it now on eBay    £3,500

Bolton


http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Versatronics-RV4s-PCB-Machines-Feeders-/121978905981?

I just ordered 5 of the Ebay ones, so if they turn out to be OK I'll have some spare UK stock for future emergencies.

The price suddenly trebled !

Mike,

not to hijack the thread, but is that the same as these ?     http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181898874401

Chris

None available I guess !

as I have 16mm lanes I am not using and not enough 12's,  I experimented
I found that a 5 x 5mm acrylic rod stuck to the bottom of the 16mm lane with double sided tape is just about right to convert a 16mm lane to a 12mm lane.

It works just fine

I'm not advocating acrylic for any other reason than it was the first 5 x 5 x 300mm rod I found on eBay

might be useful to somebody else !

ps  it spaces the projection on the underside of the tape, not the edge, so it may not work for all devices

I could do with a 7 x 12 feeder if anyone has one spare..
willing to buy or swap for a couple of 10 x 8

Cheers,

exactly what I needed to know.
I have a crimp tool with no jaws sitting in a drawer waiting !

It would be nice to have every toll that exists but I am a bit of cheapskate..

To avoid splicing I try to design new circuits to use the parts already loaded onto the machine,
even to the extent of using three resistors instead of one !  Sometimes though there is no option but to swap something out
and that is where this will be useful.

They don't seem to come up on eBay :-(

I can't justify buying a splicing tool for the very few times I need to use it.

but it would be useful to be able to join tapes occasionally

I've been looking at some of the crimping pliers for the brass joining shims.. thinking it wouldn't take 5 minutes to make a jig.

they seem to have a flat base with just a couple of locating dowels...

but is the underside of the top jaw smooth, or is it a complicated shape to open up the little teeth?

If it is indeed parts bounce, I had an issue with small zener diodes (SOD-723) being placed upside down

I narrowed it down to carrier tape bounce, they were flipping over while still in the tape, it doesn't take much bounce as they are nearly square in cross section

Since the feeder was already adjusted to pick the diode as close to the cover plate as possible, it wasn't that one part was flipping while the precious was being picked, so it must be at the very moment the tape advances and the cover is stripped.

hanging a weight on the end of the tape reduced the problem, but it still happened randomly.

I reasoned that the feeder was designed to take the  paper carrier which is much thicker than the plastic tape, so there was excessive vertical freedom of movement of the tape.

My temporary bodge was to stick a strip of thin card to the underside of the stripper plate with double sided tape, just wide enough to fit the slot in the feeder.

Worked like Magic, no more bounce !

for a more permanent solution I considered modifying a whole feeder to suit plastic tape by machining the top of the main ally block off,

but my temporary bodge is still working, and if it ain't broke, I tend not to fix it.

Sorted..

me not understanding the software..

double imaging forces the stop even when the run-time test is not checked

If you pull the silicone waterproofing layer off, the strips will last much longer.
The silicone causes the LEDs to run hot and they fail prematurely.

Lesson learned the hard way   

When I was setting up a job, I turned on run-time-test in the cdf files for a couple of components...

once I had fine tuned the placing of those components I tried to turn off the run-time-test by unchecking the check box in the cdf.

now when the cdf is opened, the check box is unchecked.

for reasons I don't understand, the machine is still halting during the place and asking for confirmation.

Any clues as to how to turn this off ?

In both cases this is happening, the double imaging checkbox is checked in the CDF advanced dialog.