Southern Machinery odd form insertion machine on the THT line

PCB Data and Mark Points on an Odd Form Insertion Machine | Southern Machinery

An odd form insertion machine does not insert into a drawing. It inserts into a coordinate system that someone had to describe to it — the board outline, its origin, its thickness, its orientation on the conveyor, and the reference marks the vision system locks onto before the first head moves. Everything the machine does afterwards is measured from that description.

Lesson 4 of Southern Machinery's odd form machine training series covers PCB data and mark point handling — the step where the board itself is defined to the machine. It is the least visible lesson in the series and one of the most consequential: insertion position, pickup position, material data and array data are all expressed relative to the board frame that this lesson establishes. Get the board frame wrong and every downstream data set inherits the error — at the insertion station, then after wave soldering, then at AOI, then in a customer return.

The training lesson is embedded below.

Direct link: watch Lesson 4 of the odd form machine training series on YouTube

What is this machine used for?

An odd-form insertion machine is the THT station that handles what the rest of the assembly line cannot. Transformers, relays, connectors, fuse holders, terminal blocks, radial electrolytic capacitors, inductors, lamps and optoelectronic parts are neither radial tape, axial tape nor SMD. They arrive in trays, tubes, vibratory bowls or loose bags, with different lead pitches, asymmetric bodies and no shared presentation standard. A radial inserter cannot be pointed at them, and manual insertion gives you one operator, one part, one board at a time.

An odd-form machine picks each part with a nozzle or a gripper, presents it to the board, seats the leads into the programmed holes to a programmed depth and clinches underneath, so the board can continue into wave soldering without being re-handled. Southern Machinery's odd-form platforms for this job class include the S-70LD odd form insertion machine and the S7900 series, alongside the S-7000 family of odd-form and pin/eyelet inserters.

As a reference point for the equipment class, the documented specification of the S-70LD describes four insertion heads with four adjustable feeders (tape or vibration plate), a 4,000 CPH insertion speed (3,800 CPH noted for radial resistor insertion), ±0.05 mm insertion accuracy, components from 3×3 mm to 30×30 mm and up to 50 mm high, PCBs from 50×50 mm to 300×300 mm at 0.8–5.0 mm thickness, a 220 V AC / 0.8 kVA supply, air at 0.4–0.6 MPa, noise at or below 75 dB, a machine weight of roughly 1,000 kg, and an industrial computer with vision guidance that recognises lead geometry. Southern Machinery's documented description of the odd-form inserter family also notes vision component inspection used to find quality problems before insertion rather than after, and data-driven programming with a component database.

±0.05 mm is a machine capability. Whether a production batch actually lands inside that window depends on whether the machine knows where the board is — which is what PCB data and mark points are for.

What PCB data and mark points actually control

PCB data is the machine's definition of the board: overall dimensions and thickness, the board origin and the coordinate system in which every insertion position is written, the panel or array arrangement if boards are stepped and repeated, the loading orientation and conveyor direction, and the board's position in the machine's clamping or pallet system. It is the frame of reference. Teaching an insertion position without a correct board frame produces coordinates that are right on one panel and wrong on the next.

Mark points (fiducials) are the reference features the vision system looks for to locate the board as it actually sits in the machine. Industry practice on automated assembly equipment is to place dedicated fiducials — usually round, high-contrast marks clear of solder mask and copper pours — near corners or diagonally opposite each other, so the vision system can establish both positional offset and board rotation. Many machines accept a single mark for a rough origin or three marks for a full origin, scale and rotation fit; how many points a given platform uses, and which it prefers, is a platform-specific parameter that belongs in the quotation — not in an assumption.

How the two work together in practice:

The board frame comes from the data. The machine reads the board definition, then moves to where it expects a mark point to be. The offset it measures there is applied to the whole coordinate system before insertion starts, which is what keeps lead-to-hole alignment stable across a batch of boards that are never loaded to exactly the same micron.
Recognition failure is a stop-the-line event. If the mark point is missing, covered by a connector body, too close to a board edge, obscured by a shadow or a handling mark, or simply defined in the wrong place in the program, a well-built machine refuses to insert rather than guessing — or it inserts to a wrong datum with no alarm. Which of those two things your platform does is one of the most important questions in the whole evaluation.
Mark point quality is a board design issue, not only a software issue. Solder-mask-defined pads with poor contrast, HASL surfaces with uneven reflections, panel rails that leave no room for a fiducial, and panels whose fiducials fall outside the machine's vision window all degrade recognition. The cheapest place to fix that is the PCB design and the panel layout; the most expensive is after wave soldering.
Board data must be re-verified when anything physical changes. A new panel layout, a new pallet or fixture, a re-ordered board with the same part number but a different rail width, or a conveyor height that no longer matches the machine all invalidate part of the board data. Treating the board frame as a one-off setup is how a stable line becomes a line that drifts.
The teach workflow is what makes this maintainable. Confirm how a new board is defined: whether the operator enters dimensions and finds mark points through the vision interface, whether teaching is done on a single board or on a stepped panel and propagated, and whether the board definition can be copied to other machines and other programs with the same naming convention. On a high-mix line, the board definition is the root of the data tree — everything else hangs off it.
Version and back it up. Program, board data and mark point definitions should be exportable and restorable. When a controller is replaced or an engineer leaves, a board definition that only exists inside one machine's memory is a production risk.

Screen labels, mark point counts and teach sequences differ between platforms, controller generations and software revisions, and Southern Machinery's training content reflects the naming used on the platform being demonstrated rather than a universal standard. That is why the buying question is not "does your machine use mark points?" but "show me a board being defined and its mark points recognised, on my panel layout, on the machine you are quoting."

Typical applications

1. Home appliance control boards. Air conditioners, washing machines, rice cookers, induction cookers and microwaves carry relays, connectors and transformers on boards that are frequently stepped multi-up in the panel. Mark point recognition and correct panel data are what keep insertion coordinates valid from the first cavity to the last.

2. Power supply and adapter PCBA. Vehicle power supplies, energy-saving power supplies and ballasts use large, heavy transformers and radial capacitors whose pin patterns leave little positional tolerance — typically 0.5–1.0 mm lead-to-hole clearance at most. A board datum error of a few tenths of a millimetre is the difference between a seated transformer and a bent lead.

3. LED drivers and lighting electronics. Long, narrow boards and luminous-character panels push the extremes of the machine's PCB envelope. Board data defines the usable area, and mark point placement on long boards determines whether rotation is compensated across the whole length or only near the reference end.

4. Automotive and vehicle electronics. Car audio and vehicle power supply boards mix SMT and THT content and carry polarity-sensitive parts. Mark point recognition and a verified board frame are part of the traceability chain when a customer asks which conditions produced a batch.

5. EMS and ODM plants running high-mix DIP assembly. Where one line builds many board variants on shared panel outlines, the board definition library is a changeover asset in its own right. Plants that treat board data as engineering documentation rather than operator memory are the ones whose changeovers stay predictable as the mix grows.

How it fits into a complete PCB assembly line

The board frame is defined at one station, but it is the reference the rest of the flow inherits:

SMT block first. Stencil printing, SPI, pick-and-place and reflow build the SMD side. Southern Machinery's SMT range covers this stage — stencil printers such as the SP-1008 and SP-1200, semi-automatic platforms such as the S-530L for lens and LED component mounting, higher-volume placement on the S-DU800 series, SMT intelligent reel storage for traceable FIFO kitting, and SPI/AOI inspection. Where the SMT side uses fiducials for panel alignment, the same panel design decisions affect the THT stations downstream.
Component preparation. Radial taping, lead forming, bulk capacitor taping with polarity check and axial-to-radial tapping convert loose parts into insertion-ready format. Badly formed leads cannot be compensated by any board datum — the machine will faithfully insert them.
Feeding. Tape, tube, tray, vibratory bowl and belt presentations determine what the material data can describe. Southern Machinery's feeder range covers these formats, and feeder selection belongs in the same conversation as board data: a presentation change mid-project invalidates part of the data set.
THT insertion block. The odd-form inserter works alongside the S-3010B radial inserter, the S-3000 radial insertion machine for DIP assembly, the S4000 axial inserter and the S7020 Series PIN/eyelet/terminal inserter. Each station defines its own board frame, so consistent board and panel conventions across the machines are what let one product definition travel between lines.
Soldering and lead finishing. Inserted boards move into lead-free wave soldering — the S-WS450, or the PC-controlled dual-wave S-WS350B — then to the S-320AT inline auto lead cutter, with the S-500G dip soldering machine and the S100B desktop selective soldering machine covering smaller or mixed-technology batches. A datum error is not contained at the insertion station: it surfaces after soldering, across the whole batch.
Cleaning and inspection. Stencil and pallet cleaning, SPI, AOI, online wave-solder appearance checking and X-ray equipment catch what insertion produced. The further a board-frame defect travels, the more the rework costs.
Board handling and support. Magazine loaders and unloaders, conveyors such as the SBF330 wave solder input conveyor, turnover units and buffer storage keep the line flowing while a board definition is verified. The service ecosystem behind it — spare parts across Panasonic, Fuji, JUKI, Yamaha, Samsung, Siplace, DEK, TDK and Universal platforms, custom nozzles and grippers, repair, retrofit and operator training — is what keeps board data current over the machine's working life.

Key selection parameters

The table below lists what to confirm in a quotation. Where a documented figure exists for the S-70LD platform it is shown as a reference; everything else is a category to verify against your own build.

| Parameter | Documented S-70LD reference | What to confirm for your build |

|---|---|---|

| Board data definition | Industrial computer with vision guidance | How board size, thickness, origin and orientation are entered, and who is allowed to change them |

| Mark point recognition | Vision-guided platform; vision component inspection before insertion | How many mark points can be used, what mark types are recognised, and what the machine does when recognition fails |

| Panel / array handling | Established by the board data layer | Whether teaching is per single board or per stepped panel, and how cavities are propagated |

| PCB range | 50×50 mm to 300×300 mm, 0.8–5.0 mm thick | Smallest board, longest board, largest panel and maximum panel weight |

| Component envelope | 3×3 mm to 30×30 mm, up to 50 mm high | Your largest and heaviest odd-form parts, and body clearance on the board |

| Insertion heads / feeders | 4 heads, 4 adjustable feeders (tape or vibration plate) | Head count, feeder-station count and the presentation formats your part list needs |

| Speed class | 4,000 CPH (3,800 CPH noted for radial resistors) | Required rate against components per board and changeover frequency |

| Insertion accuracy | ±0.05 mm | Hole-to-lead clearance and positional tolerance in your board design |

| Insertion sequence | Programmable insert orientations and sequence | Whether the sequence follows board data and mark point position, and how it is verified |

| Clinching | Documented on the odd-form platform | Inward or outward clinch to suit your solder process and IPC class |

| Tooling | Custom nozzles and grippers available | Availability, lead time and cost per odd-form family you run |

| Line interface | Inline station with SMEMA handshake | Conveyor height, direction and handshake with your existing DIP line |

| Data backup | Export and restore on the controller | How board data, programs and libraries are versioned, exported and restored |

| Utilities and environment | 220 V AC, 0.8 kVA; air 0.4–0.6 MPa; noise ≤75 dB | Site power, air supply, noise specification and floor loading |

| Footprint / weight | Approximately 1,000 kg | Access for setup, maintenance and feeder loading |

Beyond the specification, confirm what comes with the machine: a written board-definition procedure, a mark point placement rule that your PCB designers and panel fabricators follow, training that covers recognition failures as well as normal operation, and a first-article verification rule that is documented rather than remembered.

ROI and quality perspective

From a buyer's perspective, board data and mark points sit at the point where engineering discipline turns into production money:

Recognition failures cost machine time, not just scrap. A mark point that the vision system cannot find stops the line until someone clears it. On a DIP line feeding a wave solder oven, a ten-minute stop every shift is a capacity loss that never appears as a defect — but it appears in the monthly output number. Well-placed fiducials on the panel are close to free at the design stage.
Datum errors are silent and repeatable. A board frame that is subtly wrong produces the same error on every board until inspection or the customer finds it. Automatic insertion removes human variability — floating high, mis-insertion and reverse insertion are documented as the recurring manual failure modes — but only if the datum behind the placement is right.
Board data quality sets the floor on changeover time. On a high-mix line, the board definition is the first item an engineer touches on a new product. If it is a documented, reusable asset with a naming convention, a returning order is a program load and a verification run. If it lives in one operator's memory, it is a re-teach.
The manual baseline is expensive in ways that do not show up on the labour line. Southern Machinery's published analysis of manual odd-form insertion notes that hand-inserted parts take approximately 4 to 10 seconds each depending on operator familiarity, part orientation and presentation, and that across 5,000 boards with four odd-form components per board that variability can add 8 to 16 hours of unplanned labour per shift. Automation only delivers that saving when board and mark data are correct from the first article.
Defects found late are defects found expensive. Southern Machinery's analysis of the cost asymmetry is blunt: for a transformer with six to ten pins, a single non-seated pin can become a field failure costing many times the board's assembly value, and reworking odd-form defects after wave soldering and cleaning takes roughly 3 to 5 minutes per board with a real risk of damaging adjacent components. The board frame and its mark points are the cheapest control point in that whole chain.
It is a traceability asset. As customers push for documented process control and ESG-style reporting, knowing which board revision, panel layout, program revision and mark point definition produced a batch is the difference between an answer and a guess — and it decides whether the machine is still supportable five years after installation.

Model it with your own numbers: odd-form components per board, boards per order, boards per panel cavity, new products per quarter, changeover hours per repeat order, present mis-insert and rework rates, and the cost of a defect discovered after soldering. In most plants the arithmetic favours a platform with sound board data handling, a sensible mark point policy and a team trained to use both — long before it favours more manual stations.

FAQ

What is PCB data on an odd form insertion machine?

PCB data is the machine's definition of the board it is about to populate: dimensions and thickness, the origin and coordinate system that all insertion positions are written against, the panel or array arrangement, loading orientation and conveyor direction, and the board's position in the clamping or pallet system. It is the frame of reference for every other data set in the program.

What is a mark point on an odd form insertion machine?

A mark point (fiducial) is a high-contrast reference feature on the board or panel that the machine's vision system locates before insertion starts. From it the machine derives the board's actual position and rotation in the machine, and applies that offset to the programmed coordinates so that lead-to-hole alignment stays consistent from the first board of a batch to the last.

How many mark points should a PCB have for automated THT insertion?

Industry practice on automated assembly equipment is to place dedicated fiducials clear of solder mask and copper, commonly with marks positioned diagonally opposite each other so rotation as well as offset can be computed; many machines can work from a single mark for a basic origin. Exactly how many points a specific platform uses or prefers is a platform parameter — confirm it with the supplier for your panel layout rather than assuming a number.

What happens if the machine cannot recognise a mark point?

On a properly configured machine, recognition failure stops the cycle rather than allowing insertion to continue against a wrong datum. What matters when buying is which of the two behaviours the platform performs, whether the operator gets a clear alarm and diagnostic, and how quickly a covered, missing or poorly placed fiducial can be corrected on the shop floor.

Why does board data matter if the machine is already accurate to ±0.05 mm?

Because that accuracy is measured from the board datum the machine believes in. If the board definition, panel arrangement or mark point position is wrong, the machine inserts precisely into the wrong place. Machine accuracy and board data quality are two different controls, and both have to be right for the accuracy to show up in the finished assembly.

Can board data be reused for a new product?

Frequently, yes — where a new board shares a panel outline, pallet or conveyor configuration with an existing one, the board definition can be copied and edited rather than rebuilt. How far that reuse reaches depends on the platform and on whether your team applies a consistent naming and versioning convention. Ask to see how definitions are copied between programs, variants and machines.

What should a buyer ask to see before purchasing an odd-form inserter?

Ask to see a board defined from scratch and its mark points recognised on your own panel layout, on the machine being quoted — including what happens when recognition fails, how panel arrays are taught and propagated, how board data is exported and restored, and how the first article is verified. A prepared demo board with perfect fiducials does not answer any of those questions.

Contact Southern Machinery

Southern Machinery (Shenzhen, China; established 2011; 237+ global customers) designs and manufactures SMT, THT and PCB assembly automation — insertion machines, wave soldering, board handling, cleaning, inspection, feeders and nozzles, and the spare parts, training, retrofit and repair services around them.

For help evaluating an odd-form insertion machine, defining board and mark point data for your panel layout, training your operators, or reviewing a complete SMT/THT line, contact the team:

Email: [jasonwu@smthelp.com](mailto:jasonwu@smthelp.com)
Website: www.smthelp.com
Catalogs, manuals & documents: file.autoinsertion.com
Product images: ph.smthelp.com
Machine operation manuals & training library: SMT/THT machine operation manual library on smthelp.com

Watch the complete odd-form machine training series on the Southern Machinery YouTube channel, including this lesson on PCB data and mark points.