Hey there Matthew!

    This may be a longshot, but when I first started working in this business,
I started as an entry-level SMT equipment tech. Of course one of my major
duties was machine PM's. When I was getting showed the ropes of how to PM the
nozzles a CP, a guy named Mark Knoepfler was my supervisor back then (he's at
Compaq, Houston now), and he taught me to do something when putting the
nozzles back together for reinstallation that's not in the manuals, that could
be a fix...

     Mark showed me when you're sliding the inner sleeve into the outer
sleeve, you should make sure that it's travel inside that particular outer
sleeve is going to be completely free and unrestricted before you get it back
in the turret with all the springs. You do that by placing your thumb and
index finger over each end of the outer sleeve so that the inner sleeve will
stay inside the outer sleeve as you shake it back and forth allowing the inner
sleeve to travel the full length of the keying groove which the two keys on
each side of the inner sleeve slide along, it's like how you'd shake a test
tube back and forth, you're checking that the inner sleeve movement is
completely unrestricted and doesn't stick at all. Most of them will check
okay, but occasionally you'll find one that doesn't slide back and forth
easily but sticks inside the outer sleeve. When that happens, you take the
inner sleeve back out and rotate it 180-degrees and slide it back in. When you
check the inner sleeve movement again, it should be fine.

Mark explained to me then, that over time the nozzles do wear and get tweaked
a little, and the fit is so close between the inner sleeve and outer sleeve
that you need to "match" inner sleeves with compatible outer sleeves to avoid
that kind of problem...it'll be intermittent too. You can crack parts, or
you'll get intermittent e-stops from the sensor that checks if the nozzle has
fully retracted after placement at station 7...

That's about the only thing I can think of...if it were too much spring
tension in the nozzle springs, I would think you'd be seeing a whole mess of
broken parts...

It's a longshot I know....sorry this was so long!


-Steve Gregory-

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