To me, here are the most relevant bits of why they chose the CHMT36VA over others:<p><pre><code> Let me say that the needs or SparkX are slightly odd.
We need to build 10-50 of a design and see how it
sells. As it sells we may need to build 100-500pcs.
If a design needs more than 500 pieces then it
immediately gets moved over to our proper SMD
production lines with much more capable machines.
SparkX needed something small and quick to setup.
After evaluating all the various vendors we decided
on the CHMT36VA. It seemed to be the best fit of
low-cost and most flexible while being able to get
the job done.
</code></pre>
Right before it:<p><pre><code> ... the nail in the coffin for the Neodyn 4 in my eyes
... he says the feeders aren’t that great, they are
challenging to load, and machine makes mispicks quite
often. Why spend ~$10k on a machine when I can have a
cheaper machine with less hassle? The CHMT36VA is far
from perfect but I can work around the problems.
</code></pre>
It's not that the CHMT36VA (the $2.8k PnP machine in question) is great or competes with "industrial" pick and place machines, it's that it's optimized for small to medium runs. To me, this is very much in line with "fail fast" or "lean startup" philosophy but for electronics. SparkFun can make a small experiment with minimal risk.
Buying your own pick&place is quite similar to buying an FDM 3D printer. It doesn't make any sense at low scale, unless you want to spend endless time tinkering with the machine proper.<p>Pick&place, as well as 3D printing, begins to make sense at industrial scale, with huge expensive machines. Sparkfun might be a borderline case, but I suspect even they won't use these cheap pnp machines in the longer term.<p>If you are a hobbyist or a low-scale manufacturing operation, you are much better off using MacroFab, PCBNG, Small Batch Assembly or AISLER.net for electronics production, and Shapeways for 3D printing (SLS). Alternatively, for quantities of ~10 of electronics devices, it makes sense to order your boards and stencils from OSHpark or AISLER, place components yourself using tweezers, and either use a modified oven or a hot air soldering iron for reflow.<p>This is speaking from experience (as a hobbyist/maker, electronics design engineer designing proof-of-concept and small-scale production devices, and <a href="https://PartsBox.io/" rel="nofollow">https://PartsBox.io/</a> founder).
Interesting that for such an inexpensive but specialized hardware device it still has a "phone home on boot" feature.<p>Given what this device does compared to a 3d printer (xyz axis movement, suction head, part reel incrementer, webcam + identification software), it seems like a sufficiently motivated hobbyist could come up with something passably similar in the same price ballpark.
There are definitely somewhat mature DIY alternatives such as LitePlacer [1] and there is ongoing effort towards an open-source software stack for PnP machines [2], but for this area to really pick up, sub-$500 kits are probably necessary. One could argue that hobby-level 3D printing would have gone nowhere if 3D printers were at a ~$3,000 level.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.liteplacer.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.liteplacer.com/</a>
[2] <a href="http://openpnp.org/" rel="nofollow">http://openpnp.org/</a>
I'll be interested to see if they are using it a year from now. Everyone I know who got the previous generation of similarly priced machines (like the Neodyn TM220/240A) no longer use them. Mostly due to the accuracy being not good enough for 0603 or similar sizes.<p>Computer vision really is the answer, but from reading the article it sounds like the CV on the CHMT36VA isn't great for parts that aren't 0603 and it's not open/easily hackable to be better.
I worry about phoning home if the company goes offline. When phoning home, sniff the packets. I wonder if mother China is sending exactly the same authorization packets back to the device every time? If so it should not be terribly difficult to spoof the DNS on your own network and set up a small server to provide the necessary answer to turn on the machine.