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]
Awesome, but slow. Maybe someone can figure out a stripper device that takes only a second instead of 10 seconds.
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..
@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.
@localroger: I recently ran across a pack of flexible breadboard wires with square pins attached, seems like it would be even better: http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/breadborad-jumper-wire-75pcs-pack-p-234.html
Are the commercial ones that expensive? The one they have down in production goes like a million times faster anyway…
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…
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.
I have an old Radio Shack solder feeder somewhere, it clipped onto the iron and pushed the solder through a little metal tube when you pressed a lever, all mechanical.
it’s those little shorties that get me, you know what i’m talking about. where’s that machine?
That is a well orchestrated symphony of awesome. Very well done!
Gravitech has a nice selection of jumpers too.
They sell M/M, M/F and F/F jumpers.
The good thing about it, is that they give you 100 M/M for 6 US Dollars.
http://store.gravitech.us/jumper-wires-pack-mm.html
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
hey, that’s a great idea.. i’d like to build one of em solder feeders too…