Automagic Board Stuffer

When I worked at a local Co back in '80, the assy line people had a board stuffer that had to be run manually, like a pantograph if you know what that is. WOrked okay for the hundreds of 1k resistors that the boards used. Well, nowadays, they do it like this, with tape reels, but it looks like they still need an attendant to push the big red button if something goes wrong. See URL

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Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, Dar
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Then who would be changing the reels to load new ones or different type of parts, etc etc. Those machines don't run by themselves. rw

Reply to
Rein Wiehler

Do us a favor and turn off the HTML before posting again. This message was 205 lines for a little over a screen full of text.

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Michael A. Terrell
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Michael A. Terrell

Eh... thank you for the "welcome".

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Bryan Swadener

You are more than welcome on the group, but some of us have vision problems. Small fonts don't help. Also, some people use text only browsers, so your message is filled with all the HTML tags and this makes it very difficult to read. Its considered a common courtesy to post all usenet messagfes in plain text for these, and other reasons.

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Michael A. Terrell
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Michael A. Terrell

There are machines available that take a whole bunch of tape reels of different components, and sort and merge them into a new tape reel of mixed components that runs on the board stuffing machine.

-Chuck

Re>

Reply to
Chuck Harris

I find these machines amazing considering they are not doing anything hard they are just using mechanical engineering that has been with us for years, tighter tolerances and manufacturing techniques have made them possible but no startling innovations. I was watching some in Poland this week and could stand for ever looking at them.

When you start with PCB and components and completed assemblies fall out the other end you have to wonder what the next step will be.

Insert basic raw materials here (dirt) Remove completed item here :)

Reply to
Mjolinor

In article , snipped-for-privacy@erols.com mentioned...

Sort of reminds me of the old IBM sorter collator EAMs of the '60s and earlier. Geez, that kind of shows my age. Not that I ever used one, since I was just a student back then. Mostly. ;-)

When will they invent an analog EEPROM? Like, you shine a laser beam into the window, and program the values of the resistors, connections, and other stuff on the chip. Sort of like one chip fits all. Of course there's not much of a chance to get a decent sized (1000 pF or more) cap on a chip, I'd guess.

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Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, Dar

In article , snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com mentioned...

What were you doing in Poland? Is that a new place for cheap labor in Europe?

We're about to finish escrow on a building that used to be a chip fab plant. Company was called Thermco, and the bldg is huge, 90,000 square feet (8361 sq. meters), on 7 acres. We're gonna use it for educational purposes, classrooms, labs, etc. It's going to take a year to remodel it, so I'd guess that most of the infrastructure will be demo'd and we'll not get a chance to see what it looked like. I haven't heard what the selling price was, but we have $90 million to spend, so what's a few million here and there? ;-P

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Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, Dar

Search under "analog array" Oppie ====================== Anadigm Launches Latest Field Programmable Analog Array

By Mark Long -- e-inSITE, 3/31/2003

Anadigm has launched a new dynamically re-configurable Field Programmable Analog Array (FPAA) for signal conditioning, filtering, data acquisition, and closed-loop control applications.

Offering four configurable I/O cells and two dedicated output cells, the new AN221E04 features an advanced input/output structure that will allows the device to be programmed with up to six outputs. When deployed in I/O-intensive applications, the company reports that a single FPAA can be employed to process multiple channels of analog signals where two or more such devices were previously required. In addition, designers can used the new device to implement an integrated 8-bit ADC right on the FPAA. Designers can then route the ADC's digital output off-chip using one of the dedicated output cells.

The company's AnadigmDesigner2 EDA software has been designed to enable designers to construct complex analog functions using configurable analog modules (CAMs) as building blocks. Featuring drag-and-drop interface, the software reportedly allows complete analog systems to be built, simulated, and then downloaded to the FPAA chip for testing and validation. According to the company, a single AN221E04 can be programmed to implement multiple analog functions and/or to adapt on the fly to maintain precision operation despite system degradation and aging. Since the analog functions are defined by software, control is implemented using C-code that is automatically generated by AnadigmDesigner2.

Packaged in the 44-pin QFP, the AN221E04 is priced at $16 each in 10K quantities. A complete evaluation kit that includes development board, entry-level software and updated documentation is priced at $499 each. In addition, designers can download a free trial copy of the company's AnadigmDesigner2 EDA tool at:

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Reply to
Oppie

In article , snipped-for-privacy@-nospam-ludl.com mentioned...

That's cool! Actually I should've said analog PROM. Once it's zapped with the laser, that's the way it stays. I'm thinking more like a field programmable ROM that's a one time deal. THat way, it'll be cheaper than 16 bucks.

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Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, Dar

Hi All,

In plain text this time, for the HTML-challenged...

That looks very much like the SMT pick 'n place machine I turned up for Symetrix

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about 7 years ago. The machine was a low-end unit from Quad Systems
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Even so, it didn't take long for a 5000-piece reel of (for example) 0.1uf/50V/X7R/1206 caps to run out. The faster "chip shooter" type of machines are even faster, and will typically use larger 15" reels of the "popcorn" parts.

Even many SOIC/SSOIC parts could be had in tape-and-reel. But, where we had low usage (and/or expensive) ICs, we typically got them in tubes. Those had to be fed out of a vibratory feeder, which were often a bit tricky to set up... you had to adjust frequency and amplitude so the parts would feed down the tube (but not jump out on their own).

We also had a few QFP parts that came in waffle-trays, which had their own issues. The narrow lead spacing required we not use the laser-checking that was used for other parts. They had a nifty optical system that would check the component's leads for straightness first, and reject it if out of tolerance. Since those parts were always expensive, it wouldn't chuck it into a discard bin -- it would set it back into its location in the waffle tray, and select the next one.

For a low-end machine, we thought it was pretty good -- it would stuff a board w/ 300 components in about 8 minutes.

We also had autoinsertion of axial-lead through-hole parts, and semi-automatic insertion of radial lead through-hole parts. I understand, like many companies, Symetrix is now contracting w/ asian firm(s) for their assemblies.

Bryan

PS: My first post > >

Reply to
Bryan Swadener

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