Oh I know there are loads of attempts out there which is why I am wary of not falling into the same trap of trying to develop a solution that competes with £15k entry level machines that cost that much due to the development and then spend my life developing the machine and not my work. This is why I want to get as much off the shelf stuff as possible and just do the work that ties the bits together which will teach me software I need to learn anyway. Also for just one or a few boards it is probably not worth setting all the feeders up and once you try to do that you have made a limitation for yourself in that you won't fit all the parts so still have to keep stopping and reloading. This is why I would load one part at a time, take the head to the first and tell it to start from there in this direction and that the parts are at this pitch and avoid trying to be too clever.

The other problem I have with these open source projects is that they rise and fall and you have to be able to keep up with them and know what they are on about and if you don't your out of the gang. I tire of being told that if I don't like the way their open source project does something then go and write a fix, open source seems to mean that only the nerds that can design one from scratch anyway can make it work, I design PCB's I don't want to become a co developer on a project that sort of does what I want but not quite but just fails in the end. I am literally looking to solve my limitations which are:

1) not bending over a table
2) not having to wear magnifiers
3) not wasting time finding parts on the board myself when a machine can be told as the data is already available but the coordinates are not that useful to a human
4) not waste time trying to get parts out of carriers and picked up the right way around
5) be able to make precise parts placements that I can't by hand even if that takes longer but saves the build.