RV1s on ebay

[Mike]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Versatronics-RV1s-Pick-and-Place-Machine-/170659568094?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item27bc1a59de

[Mike]

For reference this started at £1950, ended at £2760 wth 4 bidders.
Sold as working, with 2x8mm, 1x8+12 and vib feeders

[Gopher]

I wonder if the buyer is on here or will find their way to being so. I wish them luck! The impression I have been getting while gathering details on a replacement machine are that most RV's are now just as troublesome as I find ours to be. Certainly that's what I am being told both by people who have had RV's and the guys selling the replacement machines.
Out of interest is(or has, or will) anyone going through the process of acquiring a new P&P, & would they be interested in sharing any of their finding/impressions, I have ignored the lower end (APS, TWS, Mechatronika) and focused on machines from a ViVo upwards, I've seen a selection (but by no means all) some of which you might see very rarely on the 2nd hand market. (Not as often as you see massive Juki's and Quad's)

Dima
Essemtec
Europlacer
Evest
MyData
Will See A ...Fritsch

All look pretty good, across that range the price can ~double but they are all very different.

[SteveW]

Yeah, it's me...
My RV1S(ish) from last year is now doing sterling service, and I'm concerned how much I'm relying on it, hence a backup. And some more feeders... (also, new premises beckon, so a machine at home, and a machine at the office, would be a decent solution)
I still have to help my ancient feeders along (light pressure on the cover tape reels) for some plastic tapes - I just can't get the pressure right, but other than that, it just rocks along. I'm hoping the (newer style) feeders from this ebay machine will let me fix that, and just run paper tapes in the old feeders. (Ah yes, the Fiducial camera has given up. Since I couldn't use it for feeder setup anyway, I don't miss it enough to investigate. My cobbled repair to the nozzles after the 'merge moves' carnage earlier is holding up, although I still ought to buy some spares, just in case. )
I'm starting to wish it was a bit faster, when I'm doing a run of boards, but if I can let it run unattended for whole panels, that'll do. It just sits in the corner of the lab, doing its thing.
(It's soooo nice having it in-house, and not having to do (very much) manual pick&place any more.) Customers are happy, I'm happy...
I probably only run it 3 days a month, and can afford to cater to its foibles. If I was running an assembly shop, not a prototype house, I'd almost certainly be looking at something spiffy from Vivo.

For what it's worth, I've abandoned plastic stencils, just too much of a pain. They didn't quite register right across the whole area of a panel, and who needs that hassle? They're fine for single small boards, but recently I've been doing panels. (Stencilling using an unexciting 199x299mm OK unit I got ages ago, but never used. I probably ought to stop using plastic cards as squeegees, but they work rather well).

Next challenge - BGAs. Nothing ultra-fine pitch, but I fancy a play. Problem will be inspection, I guess. Also, taping thermocouples onto my boards during reflow was an interesting learning exercise. Why OK thought that measuring the air temperature was relevant is beyond me. I'm starting to look longingly at more proper ovens, although I don't really have the space, and I'm not keen on warmup times or massive power requirements.

Steve

[Gopher]

A sound plan, if you ever tire of its foibles, from what I have seen, a 2nd user Dima "Hybrid" or one of the many Essemtec machines are the best options as they are still manufactured and supported and their users really like them. Feeders for both are not exactly cheap and I suspect the machines are somewhat easier to find without any at all as they are valuable to those who already have machines. A few years down the line you will probably see Fritshes, Vivos and Autotroniks but at the moment I think they are either too new or still making their mark on the UK market.

Our Mekko IR oven is just a touch longer than the Technibench it sits on, there quite a few on the market this kind of size (quite a few are probably the same with a different name) with this kind of process length you will find there are occasions where you have to do a bit of trial and error to get a good profile and some big things just won't solder. For a replacement, all the ovens that looks suitable for us as a contractor are about 3m long with a process length somewhere between 1.6 and 2.2m this puts the cost between £15k and £25k brand new depending on just how smart it is. Typically you can get ~30% off that if you happen on an ex demo at the right time. Blundell in particular have a very extensive range of all sizes of oven including batch ones. The best option of all, provided you don't need support for big boards is a batch vapour phase oven, where profiling is simply not an issue.