Oomlout’s Guide To Kitting

oomlout

The team at oomlout has continued to post all the methods they use in their manufacturing process. This time around it’s the kitting process: how they actually packaged 30 identical SERB kits in an efficient fashion. We covered their wire cutting bot before, but they’ve got other dedicated machines like a sticker cutter. The stickers are used to remove all the cut acrylic pieces from the laser cutter as one unit. They’ve got some other tricks like using a scale to count bolt quantities, and an egg timer to keep track of the laser cutting. All of their envelopes are printed using a parallel port inkjet that has been modified to work with any thickness paper.

We love when hackers bother to post this much detail about their process. One of our favorites is [ladyada]’s full rundown of how the Minty Boost was created.

14 thoughts on “Oomlout’s Guide To Kitting

  1. Enough spamming ddsas (or whatever you’re going by at the moment). That website isn’t even interesting. Just a collection of the latest random trash on the net. And get a proper domain name.

  2. All I saw knitting as well.

    I checked out that robot, for $50 you get a breadboard, two skate bearings, three 0-rings, and some nuts, bolts and wire.

    NO ACRYLIC. What a ripoff, as the acrylic is the only difficult part of that bot. Hmm, makes me want to build a little bot out of aluminum stock, I wonder if I have enough left.

  3. the people at dynaco [tube amps, pll fm tuner, and other kits] in the late 60’s, early 70’s had a clever idea for their kitting – they bounced the screws and other small parts off of a loudspeaker cone, and counted the impulses

  4. @ben: I highly doubt they have to pass any kind of certifications, because the “finished product” is just a box of parts that does not do anything. I’m sure there is some legalese in the manual that releases them from any kind of blame from a built unit as well.

    But I would be interested to hear if anyone knows more (maybe rohs applies? etc.)

  5. Ok I don’ know about anyone else but I work for a major electronics test equipment manufacture and I have seen the process for assembling VERY expensive test systems and I am impressed at the quality of the assembly of the kit. Not only have they produced an exceptional quality product they also showed how they did it in ridiculous detail. Right ON! Most companies would consider this a “Trade” secret but they not only documented it but provided all the files to reproduce it. I agree the kit is expensive but that wasn’t the point of the article………………… I believe it is more along the lines of automation on a small scale. RIGHT ON! Keep it coming!

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