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Selecting pick and place machine (comparison/personal experience/sales pitches)

Selecting pick and place machine (comparison/personal experience/sales pitches)

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Hello, We are looking for a modern pick and place machine fo... - Apr 27, 2021 by Michael

Can you also provide budget? ... - Apr 27, 2021 by MagyarT

Do you need flexibility or speed of placement? ... - Apr 28, 2021 by MikeKeens

This is a very tricky question butt... we should be able to ... - Apr 28, 2021 by Michael

Flexibility (if what I am thinking about flexibility is corr... - Apr 28, 2021 by Michael

It will be tough to get a good line for that cost. You might... - Apr 28, 2021 by Stephen

That is a very tight budget for a new line with the capabili... - Apr 29, 2021 by Tom

We currently have Yamaha/Assembleon Opal with heller 1800. I... - Apr 29, 2021 by Michael

I have a customer who ask close to prototyping jobs with low... - Apr 30, 2021 by Kristof_K

Michael

#86541

Selecting pick and place machine (comparison/personal experience/sales pitches) | 27 April, 2021

Hello, We are looking for a modern pick and place machine for the mid-quantity (100-1000 panels per run) that can handle over 100 feeders and be precise enough to handle 0201. Everywhere I look I see the promotion of the equipment and not much honest comparison. With trade show canceled it makes it tough to make a call. I would like to hear your opinions on the best/worst equipment out there

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MagyarT

#86548

Selecting pick and place machine (comparison/personal experience/sales pitches) | 27 April, 2021

Can you also provide budget?

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MikeKeens

#86562

Selecting pick and place machine (comparison/personal experience/sales pitches) | 28 April, 2021

Do you need flexibility or speed of placement?

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Michael

#86568

Selecting pick and place machine (comparison/personal experience/sales pitches) | 28 April, 2021

This is a very tricky question butt... we should be able to afford up to 200k for a full line (printer/PnP/inspection/oven) I know the cost of feeders will be very critical but looks like the good old pneumatic not cutting it anymore.

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Michael

#86569

Selecting pick and place machine (comparison/personal experience/sales pitches) | 28 April, 2021

Flexibility (if what I am thinking about flexibility is correct) is more important than speed. Most of the time spent on reloads, not the runs. We have high mix and fairly low volume (100-1000) Medium complexity QFPs, 0402, LEDs 100-2000 components per board. We are OEM not CM.

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Stephen

#86570

Selecting pick and place machine (comparison/personal experience/sales pitches) | 28 April, 2021

It will be tough to get a good line for that cost. You might want to start by looking at Mydata and Juki for the machines. Ekra for the screen printer and Heller for the oven is where you might want to start.

If you have not already you might want to eliminate 5% resistors. One place I worked we put a lot of parts permanently on the machines. To help cut down on the mix of parts we had the engineers stop using 5% resistors and only use 1% resistors. Also we eliminated higher tolerance capacitors. Another OEM that I had worked for, bought enough Fuji modules to put all the parts on the line at one time. That was after I had left.

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Tom

#86571

Selecting pick and place machine (comparison/personal experience/sales pitches) | 29 April, 2021

That is a very tight budget for a new line with the capabilities you describe. You might be better off with a refurbished line from a reputable dealer. Equipment that is only a few years old can get you the capabilities you want within your budget.

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Michael

#86577

Selecting pick and place machine (comparison/personal experience/sales pitches) | 29 April, 2021

We currently have Yamaha/Assembleon Opal with heller 1800. I think we can start with just a printer and PnP. I am open to a refurb printer but would like to get a new PnP. I understand it costs a minifortune but working out bugs and lack of maintenance from previous owners kills benefits. We used this line for almost 20 years and planning on doing the same with the new one. What would you say the best bang for the buck (speed of loading/reliability/productivity/cost of feeders)? Is there something that we should stay away from?

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Kristof_K

#86581

Selecting pick and place machine (comparison/personal experience/sales pitches) | 30 April, 2021

I have a customer who ask close to prototyping jobs with low volume and high-mix components. A regular job have around 5-30 pieces board but have high quantity and many type of components. All the time over 1000 pieces of parts on board from 250-350 type. Nowadays we have jobs over 400 types of parts on a setup.

About pick & place machines: I have three Siplace, two S20 and one F4+WPC. S-line is cheap now but they are enought fast, if you can get S23-25-27 because they not analog, they are digital, they are way better for 0201. Anyways, 0201 can be placed with special feeders only which make a bit higher cost. F4 can handle clearly any size of parts and in WPC module you can store 20 tray. With Siplace line I have problems with stick magazines which are expensive and not easy-to-use sometimes. All of my machines have one internal tray holder that is why the transport widht are 250 mm only but I'm more flexible during the production. Maintenance cost is clearly good on Siplace if you have older machines, I do yearly one big repair (replacing hoses, filter, calibration), sometimes I have bigger issues but nothing impossible. Feeder cost is not a big deal nowadays. I can buy 2x8mm feeders around 30-50$ maximum and 12/16mm feeders became to cheaper everyday as the big manufacturer sell them for cheap - they are using Fuji, Juki or newer SiPlace machines. Same on replacement parts, cheap used parts are good for low-cost production, there are many chinese and european company who have parts for bucks only.

About paste printers: If you need flexibility and have well trained operators, I bet to Ekra printers. X4, X5 now is really cheap and E4-E5 (what we have) like a metal-garbage on sales prices. They are way flexible in use as DEK or other machines. Making a new printing software takes 10-15 mins maximum and the machine have a very good man-interface. DEK more faster, robust and accurate machine, have features better for reliable-production - like automatic stencil aligment - but its man-interface is strange and need time to learn/understand how to program it. If you have knowledge with DEK its quite fast and good machine too - way better as Ekra.

About reflow: we are using Rehm reflows but I can not recommend them if you havent time and knowledge in maintenance. Getting parts, making its works sometimes a real headache but they are robust and long-lasting ovens. I have a V6 which is like a dinosaur but it won't fall out in our production anymore. V7-V8-VX is worst but VXP+ is a work-horse again.

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