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

Leave a Reply to steveCancel reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.