Excellent! Love the documentation, thanks. Question: Moving from the solenoid-advanced feeder to the auto-feeder: were there any noticeable benefits? Was there something about the solenoid advancement that was holding your design back? I'm designing my own at the moment and am researching the ups and downs of manual/automatic feeders.
The main disadvantage of solenoid feeder was that, if the needle was not aligned with the holes in the tape and the needle hit the tape instead of the hole, the components sometimes jumped out of the tape. Apart from that, the operation is faster and more reliable now.
There is a camera at the bottom of the "triangle of lights" that looks at the pins on the component. The software can look at the picture and tell exactly where the pins of the component are in relation to tip of the machine. Those leds help the camera see where the pins are.
