On 13/02/2015 21:34, Dwayne Reid wrote: > At 02:23 PM 2/13/2015, Isaac Marino Bavaresco wrote: >> 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. > Actually, I think that you could put feeders on the sides only. The=20 > pickup head just can't get good access to the back of the=20 > machine. But: that would double the number of feeders, which would=20 > most likely suit my needs. That is just a matter of a little redesign. >> 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. > Yep. That's part of the price paid for low cost. Think of it this=20 > way: this whole machine cost maybe as much as 6 to 10 feeders for a=20 > 'real' machine. Proper feeders are *expensive*. That's the problem of being a small company, I need a good machine but don't have the money. >> The maximum height for the parts is also around 4mm, which severely >> restricts the range of components it can place. > Yep. But it handles most of the components that *I* need. I never restrict my designs to just standard components. Often I need big components with weird footprints. >> 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. > Yep. Those trays are good for things like TQFP packages and=20 > such. Note that the machine is smart enough to know that it needs to=20 > advance to the next compartment every time it grabs a part. I don't=20 > know how it behaves after it has taken the part out of the last=20 > compartment - I haven't needed to find out. The capability to pick up parts from trays on the table is simple to implement, it just a matter of firmware. Indeed those Chinese are very unimaginative. >> 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). > It all comes down to cost. I think that these guys were trying to do=20 > the usual "please 90% of the people 90% of the time. In my opinion,=20 > they hit the mark pretty close. > > If I was doing mostly digital designs, I'm pretty sure that I'd have=20 > a lot of empty feeders on my machine. > > dwayne My digital designs often reach over 80 different parts and I would like to be able to assemble the prototypes automatically. Currently I solder every part by hand, even 0.5mm pitch 144 pin TQFQ. Some prototypes took more than a full day to finish. I am working on a couple of designs with PIC32MZ MCUs that have 0.4mm pitch, it will be a nightmare to build the first prototypes. Isaac --=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 .