Printed Circuit Board Assembly & PCB Design SMT Electronics Assembly Manufacturing Forum

Printed Circuit Board Assembly & PCB Design Forum

SMT electronics assembly manufacturing forum.


Universal GSM Placement Data...

Views: 3048

Ben_T

#46461

Universal GSM Placement Data... | 3 January, 2007

Good evening all. I'm looking for information regarding how to generate Universal GSM placement programs. Basically, what I need to know is the format in which the machine will/can take in the placement data.

There are a few GSM's where I work, but I don't really have access to them to see what kind of data that they'll talk to. If anyone could help me out it would be much appreciated. If someone told me the correct format I could start with just creating a type of CSV file with Ref.ID, X, Y, Theta, and Part Number, which would certainly be a decent start.

Just as a bit of a background about myself, I have only been working in EMS for about a year and a half and plan to do a decent amount of software development for the industry. I always hear talk of these $50,000 programs to import BOM's, and generate placement programs. I've so far developed software for the YesTech series of AOI machines, and a BOM Importer to scrub customer BOM's for discrepancies and inject them into a database. I'm currently working on generating 4785 Chipshooter programs, along with GSM programs, so hopefully someone here can help me out.

Thanks in advance.

reply »

SWAG

#46462

Universal GSM Placement Data... | 3 January, 2007

CSV from excel works great on GSM. P/N, x, y, theta is all you need. When you do CAD upload, GSM software allows you to name columns so you don't really have to have it in any order as long as you understand it. You can also convert mils, mm, inches when you upload.

reply »

SWAG

#46463

Universal GSM Placement Data... | 3 January, 2007

oops - forgot "ref. des." is also needed in the CAD upload file but it sounds like you already knew that...

reply »

bT_Solutions

#46474

Universal GSM Placement Data... | 4 January, 2007

Thanks SWAG. I figured there must be a way to import data. I beleive right now, the SMT operators where I work are manually making the programs right on the GSM, which depending on the assembly, could take up to a full 8-hour shift (especially when they are measuring everything with calipers.....even though we have all the data.)

The particular software I'm working on will generate 4785 chipshooter programs for all parts that can be placed by that machine, and everything else will be dropped into a CSV file for the GSM. This way, the SMT operators will know what parts are being placed by what machines, and if they have an odd part on the GSM, they can just delete those line items and hand-place if needed. It'll sure beat the 8-hour shift of making a GSM program.

Thanks again SWAG, I'll repost when I've got everything worked out.

reply »

#46478

Universal GSM Placement Data... | 4 January, 2007

If you need any info about the 4785, let me know.

If you understand Perl I'd be happy to send you the software I wrote for 4785 program generation. Mine is based around PanaPRO but it would at least give you a very simple optimization routine if you aren't that far yet.

How many versions of USOS have you got on your GSMs? If they are all the same version, you could generate a CDI file that contains the feeder setup, fiducial data, component data, and board definition.

You can obtain the CDI file format by exporting a few existing programs to CDI. Or, Universal might provide it for you. I had the CDI specs at my last job.

If they aren't the same version or you think your USOS version may be changing, it's probably not worth generating a CDI file.

reply »

Ben_T

#46502

Universal GSM Placement Data... | 4 January, 2007

Thanks Cuculi. I'll be emailing you to discuss this more. If anyone else has information regarding the optimization of 4785 programs, please post.

reply »

#46598

Universal GSM Placement Data... | 11 January, 2007

I worked for a similar company. They had 4 GSM's. Most all of the GSM's software have a fairly straight forward way of importing data, it is just a matter of formating it correctly. I can't imaging using calipers to make a GSM placement program if you already have accurate data. The GSM is a very accurate machine, but is only as good as that data it is given.

Feel free to contact me directly with any questions you may have, I can probibly talk you through it.

g

reply »

#46671

Universal GSM Placement Data... | 15 January, 2007

We open our placement ascii file with excel, which then gives me the option to separate columns by tab, comma etc. Once this is done, then I need to asign part numbers to it.

There are different ways of doing this, since our BOM,s are on ascii format, I open it with excel and merge it with our X/Y data.

Then save it as formated text ( space delimited ) and done, GSM will autodetect the format and import the data.

reply »

Facility Closure

Sell Your Used SMT & Test Equipment