Automated Wire Cutter And Stripper

witecutter

Kit builder oomlout—we’ve featured their servo bot—needed to produce a lot of precut wires. After cutting and stripping more than their fair share, they decided to apply some heavy engineering to make things easier. They constructed a machine to do the job for them. It has three main components: a servo driven wire feeder to measure the length, a two servo wire stripper that uses an exacto blade, and finally a wire cutter made from snips and a drill motor. The machine is controlled using an Arduino. They’ve published all the plans and code to Thingiverse incase anyone else wants to build a similar machine for their own kit shop. A video of the machine is embedded below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2O7kGE34EA]

[via Hack a Day Flickr pool]

13 thoughts on “Automated Wire Cutter And Stripper

  1. at a previous job, an engineer requested a device that melts the insulation to strip both ends, which ensures that your stripper doesn’t nick the conductor (the damage isn’t visible until it fatigues and breaks..). That would be a great modification to this really cool machine. I suppose an x-acto blade is somewhat harmless already, but maybe not for all engineering applications..

  2. @macegr: It doesn’t really have to go any faster than you can set the wires in a breadboard. And you could always give it a production program and let it run overnight. Those kits they sell of pre-cut and stripped wires for breadboarding are ridiculously expensive.

  3. I guess when all you have is a CNC Laser Cutter, everything looks like an acrylic nail…

    But pretty cool, none-the-less. I wish I would have taken pictures/video of my 22 gauge pneumatic wire striper before I tried to convert it for 18 gauge wire… I thought it was pretty cool. It sort of sounded like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang when running…

  4. This sidelines me onto a thought/idea that’s been at the back of my mind for a couple of years now – has anyone built their own solder feeder?

    Ideally what I’d like to buy/build is a solder feeder that you can hold in your hand like a 2nd soldering iron or pen with a button on it, or attach to any soldering iron with a foot pedal button, so you can feed solder wire onto the thing you’re soldering.

    I’ve been trying to find out what’s available but most solder feeders are non-movable stations or they’re built-into the soldering iron so you can’t use your current/favourite iron.

  5. ohh, I forgot to comment about the machine :P

    it’s really nice, i’ll try to make my own version later this year, but i intend to use stepper motors and get it to actually strip the cables (that one is only cutting the insulation, right?)

    this’ll be a fun year :D

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