Re: Place more than one (same !) PCB at the time
Posted: Tue May 19, 2015 8:06 am
I am sorry about that Daniel. For 100% sure my English isn't the best. I always try though. But I guess that in this case it can be a matter of not seeing through reality. For example :danmcb wrote:I am afraid that I don't really understand all the points you are making.
Inherently you are correct. But in the same realm you could tell me to cut out the individual PCBs, load one at the time and be done with all the problems.Why would you set up your production to load two panels, with a total size of 150x150mm, when you could have only one single one? This seems to make things more complicated than they need to be, no?
Somewhere I told about 3 of these "screen shots" next to each other and 3 above each other. So that is 9 squares of 15x15cm and feasable for the machine's working surface. In other words not 2 (as you suggested) as this would be a bit non-sense and indeed only creates problems. So 18 of them and a total square of ~ 45x45cm.
They will say that this is BS because they deal with it on a per panel base anyway, or otherwise per individual PCB. Those machines have other functionalities than ours ... (in this context the moving in/out of the PCBs).If you would go to an assembly house and ask them to process two panels at a time on their P&P machine, what would they say?
Btw I hope it is clear that we (us over here) try to use the LitePlacer to avoid hiring personnel. It is not a hobby and it certainly is not the intention that the persons normally doing the soldering are now busy with the machine instead. Of course the human interfering can't be minimized to around zero, which is related to how long the solder mask lasts hence relates to the speed of the machine (and thus relates to how many placements can be done unattendedly).
Surely this will be the part I could not make clear;OK, there can be offsets - but however your panel is engineered, they would be repeatable. The point is simply to include all your offsets in the calculations given in the "boards.txt" file.
The point is NOT about defining the (repetetive) data by some means. Instead it is about you need to KNOW the data ... and we don't. Remember, all I do is order a 1000 of such PCBs and nothing about panels. It is just done like that. All I know are the dimensions and component positions of one individual board. Read : this is all the data which is available. The further necessary data can also be made available, but it has to go my measurement ...
So, fine. I measure. One PCB is 12x25mm - which I don't need to measure. There's a component A at 3.1/4.7. Don't need to measure that either.
The panel is -measured by me- 120.22 wide. The fraction of .22 is a bit tough but I tried hard.
Now I put two panels next to eachother and I measure 240.50. Or something like that as I have no tools to be more precise.
Again I say/claim that it really won't be difficult to make a program for this and spit out the positions for the components for all the individual boards. All I want to make clear though, is that this surely will NOT work by applying 10 x 12mm = 120mm because the "glueing" of the individual PCB's take space. This is how I measure 120.22 and not 120.00. OK, you got that. But now you will still think that with the measures of one panel you can extrapolate to the others (like 2 more sideways to the right).
And I say it again : no matter how hard you try to measure the "element" - if you are off by only 0.5mm over the total width or height, nothing works ...
So in my view, the only base of working can be the physical measurement of the lot so things get consistent; Measure the panel, measure the offsets in it (think borders) and measure the whole grid. Give that to a program which by now is far from simple to make.
Peter