MPM Accuflex questions and issues

Griinder, Maybe it's me, but I think what you might be saying here is that you see a reflected image of the PCB or Stencil when you and teaching the fiducials and it is interfering with the teaching routine, is that correct? If this is true it is common to see this reflection with the Accuflex. If it is so bad that you can't teach then there could be other things going on with the vision probe optics or the histogram setting of the camera. I will tell you that even if everything is working and calibrated correctly this is common with this platform. Make sure all the covers are in place and that you don't have an overhead light right above or directly in front of the machine.

Some clarity to the other comments made, all info provided is true, but let me add a little more detail. The Accuflex and all other older models of MPM (AP, UP2000, UP3000/Ultraflex, etc.) use an analog camera with a split prism optical array that allows the camera to see either up or down depending on which back light, board/stencil, is turned on. Due to this configuration it is possible to see both the stencil image and PCB image in the same view. This is also the reason why the video image on the monitor is inverted in the "Y" or up and down view, but not inverted in the "X" axis or side to side view. SR. mentioned that on an AP printer it is possible to loosen the camera and rotate it. This could actually be turned to any angle, but at 180 degrees the image on the screen would not be inverted in Y, but I think X would now be; this is not recommend. With the Accuflex you could physically do the same thing, but in this platform the camera is a wafer board camera and you would have to pull the camera out of the housing to rotate it; again this is not something you should do at all. The MPM Momentum series and Accela use a digital camera. The vision probe/optics work the same way as the other older models, but the software flips the image so it is not inverted; picture Vs. Live video. The way the lighting is controlled is also different, so it's apple and oranges!

Phil is correct in his description of teaching fids, but here's a bit more. In auto teach you double click on the fid and the software tries to figure out the best lighting settings, collect the image to store and calculate the edge definition to come up with centroid of the target. If it cannot do this it will say the object is not unique and might give you a list of similar objects found in the field of view. If all the other objects are 30-40% or lower the target will probably work, but it is better to make the target unique. Sometimes the software need help to figure out what you are trying to do. In this case you would select "manual" teach and now you are in control of the lighting and you can also use the "set Correlation box" to draw a box around you objects. So yes you can include other pads to make the object look unique, but what you have to do is then click on the actual pad you want to align to, even if it is not centered in the new correlation box you have drawn. IF you create a new box and click on the field instead of a pad/aperture, then the software tries the center the whole box. This will pass, but may compromise your alignment. So the box you draw is the image that the camera will look for when the PCB loads, once found the software will find the alignment target within the image. PCB and stencil pads/apertures much be the same target!!! The Momentum is the same way, but you size the boxes differently.

I hope find this info helpful!

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