The rigidity needed of the stencil printer can’t be understated! The one I linked up there I still modified slightly by adding a clamp to hold the “far end” of the stencil down too. I found it would move a little bit as you are stenciling by default… even a tiny movement is enough to affect your reliability a lot. Adding the clamp helped a ton.
Using the through-holes in the stencil also helps with this too, another bonus of putting the pcb panel tooling holes through to the stencil.
I ended up buying a stencil printer nearly identical to the one @coflynn pictured above. @JuliaTruchsess pointed me to one being sold through Amazon. I recently had to do several different short-run batches of boards (20+ pieces for each batch) – and not having to worry about stencil alignment while pasting up so many boards seemed like a good idea.
I’m fairly happy with the quality of the paste. For one, two, or three pieces, I think the tape-it-to-the-benchtop method actually takes less time and gets cleaner results without much fuss, as alignment is easier to set up quickly. But when everything is properly aligned and tightened down, the repeatability of the stencil printer is fantastic, and essential when you’re doing a higher quantity of boards.
Hi Folks,
I’m new to the forum and I’m getting up to speed with the N4. I’m pretty impressed with it so far though it is my first push into PnP machines. Like others have mentioned, it does appear to have a few quirks. I’m currently wrestling with the nozzle 3&4 simultaneous fire problem that was mentioned by iabarry and charliex back in Jan 19. They mention the fix is to set the pick and place heights. I have set these heights for both components but the problem persists. I’m just wondering if anyone else has experienced the same problem and if simply setting the heights did resolve it. My machine is fairly new and is running the latest version of firmware from what support tells me (4.1.4 B7 I think).
Thanks for your consideration
hey there, and welcome, it definitely fixed it for me, can you share what you’re doing and i’ll check it against mine
Thanks for your response charliex. Im not able to access the machine today so I can’t provide full details (e.g. nozzle sizes). But I’m familiarizing myself using the test board that came with the N4. It has a circular array of eight SOT32 transistors, the TQFP100 and the BGA footprints among others. With the component list order that I’ve setup, it picks a transistor (nozzle 3) and BGA (nozzle 4). The BGA places fine but it misplaces the SOT32. It then places then next 6 transistors correctly. Finally, it double picks the last transistor and TQFP (nozzle 4) and accurately places the TQFP but once again misplaces the transistor. Does this sound like the double fire problem you described previously?
Howdy!
I’m curious what everyone’s luck has been with 0402 components on the Neoden 4.
The neoden 4 seems like the most capable machine i could fit in my office. I’d likely use it for quick prototyping of a dozen boards, sometimes followed by smaller runs of 50-100. boards would have a small number of unique components - but lots of them. Also lots of breakout board style designs, with 1 main chip and a ton of passives to support it.
I normally design for 0603’s for hand soldering, but have always leaned towards 0402’s for machine assembled boards.
Thanks!
-joe
We usually stay as large as possible for our designs. I have found that the placement accuracy is good enough on the neoden for 0402 but the feeders and peelers tend to flick off parts before they can even be picked. We try to make room for 0805 when possible as a result. Far less part loss. Neoden4 is extremely sensitive when it comes to peeling and feeding. Each new reel I have to make adjustments to the torque settings and especially on paper tape for resistors and small mlcc caps. You have to keep an eye on the machine as it runs.