Comments on: SMD component strip cutter

By: 1

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 06:01:17 +0000

nice one

By: srilyk

srilyk — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:36:02 +0000

is anyone but me creeped out by the way the strip feeds the wrong way?

(I know it's actually just the framerate, but still my brain has problems)

Great hack! (I need to take a closer look at that cutter mechanism, it looks perfect for a need of mine!)

By: Miles

Miles — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 12:50:56 +0000

@ frenchie

The strips have small surface mount components on them, just the same way through-hole resistors sometimes come on long strips of paper.

Excellent hack, I suspected that it was optical, but my be was on "black" detection of the actual SMD's, I didn't realize there was a hole (duh).

By: ErikH

ErikH — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 12:45:19 +0000

Frenchie, they are cut in pieces of 10 so customers don’t have to buy a whole reel (~25â¬). Now they can buy strips of 10 resistors for â¬0.05. And as no one liked to cut 25 reels, 5000 pieces each (12.500 cuts), we automated the process ;)

By: frenchie

frenchie — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:06:57 +0000

What are these strips used for?

By: Andrew Hillenius

Andrew Hillenius — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 08:15:16 +0000

I would suggest using a rotary solenoid and relay to actuate the knife. This could speed up the system dramatically while only sacrificing power consumption.

By: ErikH

ErikH — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 03:02:54 +0000

Hey Jeroen!

Indeed, thats the one ;) Most of the credits go to RobR for this device, I just helped building the mechanics.

Your Flux arrived yesterday, so it's ready to be picked up from monday the 4th. See you there!

By: Sprite_tm

Sprite_tm — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:52:14 +0000

Heh, I expected this was from the student organisations store I buy my stuff when I remembered someone telling me they were going to sell SMD stuff, and when I saw the typical red table, I knew for sure. Gratz, nice hack, shows what one can do with a little inventivity, some ICs and a spare printer. I’ll be sure to see this on IRL soon.

By: BillW

BillW — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:59:44 +0000

alan, if you change your requirement to 512 equal lengths of wire, you can hand-cut them very quickly with divide and conquer.

Start with a very long wire, fold in half once. Take the two wires and fold them in half again. Keep folding another 7 times, and then cut the folds - many at a time - with heavy wire cutters.

But that's definitely not as neat as a wire clipping robot, and the robot can easily deal with requirements changing. ie. unequal lenghts and numbers not close to a power of 2.

By: Will O\'Brien

Will O\'Brien — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:38:58 +0000

Spam’s cleaned.

By: MacGyver

MacGyver — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:42:29 +0000

Um. Someone delete the spam please. SamuelGreen is doing some link farming.

Oh, and good hack.

By: ErikH

ErikH — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:53:59 +0000

Alan, the cutter is made using a standard blade from a 'stanley'knife. It's pretty strong and has two usable edges. It is bolted on an aluminium strip that is held by a small bearing so it can rotate up and down. A small RC-toy servo is used to push it up and down.

Brian, It uses the holes in the tape in between of the components. While the steppermotor drives the tape forward the holes go trough a IR led and photodetector (more old printer parts). The avr counts the amount of holes and cuts after the desired amount has passed the sensor.

Thnx for posting Will!

By: Brian Archer

Brian Archer — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:22:55 +0000

Wow, I’d love to see plans made for this. I take it that it’s just using the length to make the cuts?

By: Alan

Alan — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:54:39 +0000

What a great idea! I have been thinking of making something similar (not as high tech though) for cutting lengths of wire from a large spool when making stair lights.
http://alan-parekh.vstore.ca/index.php/cPath/1_2
I would love to be able to set it to cut 500 equal lengths of wire and go and watch a movie! Instead I come away with blisters. :(

Any details on the servo cutting mechanism? Looks to have some very good mechanical advantage...