A friend of mine owns a TM240A, its smaller sibling is the TM220A. Those machines were very common an AliExpress some months ago but now they simply disappeared from there and can be found only at . I have the same opinion as yours, to me simply there are not enough feeders. The manufacturer could put feeders on at least three of the four sides of the machine for very little cost. The feeder arrangement is also totally inflexible, with just a fixed number of 8mm, 12mm and 16mm feeders, without the possibility of replacing some of them for a different width. The maximum height for the parts is also around 4mm, which severely restricts the range of components it can place. The machine also cannot pick parts from a tray on top of the table, it can only pick loose parts from some bins of fixed size in its front side, you must keep filling the bin with parts by hand. All those limitations allow the machine to be used just for very simple jobs, it should have support for at least 80 feeders of flexible widths of up to 44mm (SD-Card slot). Isaac On 13/02/2015 16:15, Dwayne Reid wrote: > I have what I think is a smaller version of that machine. There is a=20 > good chance the machine on aliexpress came from the same factory as mine. > > My machine has 28 feeders and I find that just isn't enough. The=20 > reason I say that is because it takes several minutes to load one=20 > single reel onto the feed rack and thread the tape and get the=20 > plastic tape cover loaded onto the peel spool. > > That said: the machine works *very* well. No vision but it uses=20 > dead-reckoning positioning and it is *accurate*. Just like the=20 > professional P&P machines from years gone by. > > I'd like more than 28 feeders because I do so much analog work. That=20 > means that I use lots of odd-value resistors (E24 & E96 series) as=20 > well as lots of capacitor values. > > Generally speaking, 28 feeders has been enough to do one board. But=20 > it takes too much time to vhange reels on the machine. A machine=20 > that had double or triple the number of feeders would suit me nicely. > > On the other hand, if someone is doing mostly digital work, a machine=20 > similar to mine would work very well. > > dwayne > --=20 http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .