Single Board Trial Run
Posted on Youtube by Tinker Bee:
We moved into a new shop last week in order to accomodate delivery of this new machine. The MC-385V1V has been sitting on the floor of the new shop since Wednesday when it was uncrated by the moving company.
We got the machine set up and powered up and starting programming in a library of components one-by-one. We won’t have internet service at our new shop yet (they are coming next week) so we’re not sure if a bigger library is available from the support website, but the library that came on the machine was a little sparse. This doesn’t really matter — the software works in such a way that you really need to customize every part that you load into the machine anyway.
The documentation is pretty good. We were able to power up the machine, get it calibrated, load the feeders, program the feeders, create library parts, and finally do a test run of 1 board within a matrix. It took about 10-12 hours from the time I walked into the shop to the time I took this video, but part of that included 3 trips to Home Depot for parts for the machine and other supplies for the new shop, as well as a lot of learning about how all the different feeder types work. This PCB required the use of the wafflepack tray, the vibratory feeder, and 8mm tapes.
Again the documentation is pretty decent, there are some errors and discrepancies but if you read carefully they won’t throw you off track (I believe the documentation is really for the MC-39x series but most of it applies to the MC-38x series). There are tutorial videos that are very helpful as they demonstrate some physical aspects of the machine. There is a service manual that focuses more on the hardware nuts and bolts and the calibration; there is also a software manual that focuses more on library part creation and running PCB’s. Everything is bolted together using hex keys (included) so in reality there’s not much about this machine you can’t learn about and fix yourself based on the documentation.
If I get stumped, MannCorp has been picking up their phone 7 days a week to answer my stupid questions anyway.
That’s about it for now, expect more videos and news about our new MC-385 V1V machine in the near future.