It's Alive!

Hi,

For those that asked, I got the Zevatech monster to churn out the
first panels (12 G201s per panel) today. It's my new 14,000 parts
hour, 3-head, 3,000 lb pick-and-place SMT machine. It goes up against
the 150 lb Ursulla, who can manage 3,000 parts per hour when she is
in a good mood.

I had to wait for special feeders as well as the latest G201 boards
that now have fiducial targets on them. The new machine requires them.
Then it was 8 hours of tutoring on how to run the beast at $150 an
hour on Saturday. I spent all day yesterday and a good part of today
on co-ordinate entry (146 parts, about 18 keystrokes / part), part
descriptor data and pick location parameters. I finally got to push
the magic green "Go" button about 4PM.

Big difference.

This machine can remove major body parts if you get in its way. My
guess is about 150 lbs of gantry stuff is moving at 4 feet per second.
The thing "walks" on the floor though it weighs a ton and a half.
I'll have to get some rubber pads for its feet to stop that.

From start to finish a panel took 11 minutes to Ursulla's 45 minutes.
Impressive to watch as well. I'll take a couple of pix of it in
action and post them if anyone is interested. The boards were perfect
by the way; every part, all 1,752 of them landed within .001" of
where they were supposed be.

Mariss