Neoden K1830-Please share your Kicad to Neoden workflow

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Hi,
We have just bought a NEODEN K1830 at the UK university where I work as a Technician. I use Kicad (currently V6.01 and V6.99 nightly). I have watched a couple of your Neoden K1830 video’s and I’m wondering if you could at some point share how you prepare a PCB in Kicad for use with the Neoden K1830 machine. Would you be able to do a step by step tutorial or a video? If so, that would be great. Thanks.

David,
Bovingdon, Herts, UK.

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Hi David - welcome to the forums :slight_smile:
There are a couple of options to get the footprint positions into the “Placefile”:

  • Use Neoden’s import tool: this requires you to export the positions from KiCad (File>Fabrication Outputs) and shuffle the data around until it is in the same format as the position list at the bottom of a neoden Placefile (.csv)
  • Manually: the same as above, but copying the position information directly into a Neoden Placefile (.csv). Since the first option requires shuffling data around anyway, I prefer this method.

In any case, it is the data in this area that appears in “Coordinate Information” which in turn defines what Footprints/Values are eligible for setup in the “Feeder Information” tab.

It’s unlikely that we’ll release a full workflow video… Producing such a resource and capturing all the nuance of SMT assembly line setup would take significant resources - it sounds like it would be in Neoden’s interests to produce such a workflow tutorial.

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