If you have any kind of business, chances are it involves stickers at some point in the process. More accurately it involves you peeling the backs off of sticker after sticker, slowly wasting time and working your way toward a repetitive stress injury. Why do that to yourself when you could have a machine do it for you?
That’s exactly the thinking behind [Mr Innovative]’s automatic label dispensing machine. All he has to do is load up the roll of labels, dial in the length of each label, and away the machine goes, advancing and dispensing and taking up the empty paper all at once. In fact, that’s how it works: the take-up reel is on the shaft of a NEMA-17 stepper motor, which gets its instructions from an Arduino Nano and an A4988 motor driver. Our favorite part is the IR sensor located underneath the sticker that’s ready to take — the machine doesn’t feed another until it senses that you’ve taken the previous sticker. We stuck the demo and build video after the break.
Our other favorite thing about this build is that [Mr Innovative] seems to have used the same PCB as his freaky fast bobbin winder.
If you don’t mind it losing the first sticker you could have it automatically determine the sticker length by rolling off the sticker until it sees it go away.
Or you could move sensor so that dispenser stops when sticker sticks out enough. Maybe second sensor to detect end of tape (or stop after some known amount without sticker detected).
This would also solve the problem of accumulated error if the sticker length isn’t measured exactly
no batteries required , https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/H-994/Label-Dispensers/Clear-Acetate-Mailing-Label-Dispenser-Manual?pricode=WB3494&utm_source=Bing&utm_medium=pla&utm_term=H-994&utm_campaign=Labels&utm_source=Bing&utm_medium=pla&utm_term=H-994&utm_campaign=Labels&msclkid=fb324c4c774513d556e713d5c895bace&gclid=fb324c4c774513d556e713d5c895bace&gclsrc=3p.ds
What?
Buy instead of build?
How could you hold up your head at the next Hackers Club meeting if you did that? ;-)
That’s a lot of money for 2 slabs of plastic and some bits of aluminum tube. Plus I’m sure you’d have to reach under and pull that paper tail every time to get the next sticker to feed forward. Then you’d have to tear it off when it gets too long and gets in the way, which would probably ruin a few stickers here and there, or keep some scissors nearby which would require putting down everything you’re doing and pick those up. While a good idea for someone incapable of building something better, the device from the article is clearly better even if it could do with a few improvements.
I use date stickers at work with the feature built into the storage box, the box has an extra layer that the backing gets pulled through to hold it over itself. The sticker is stiff enough that it sticks out while the backing peels away for easy sticking.
I like the build though.
That automated dispenser could come in handy in our health facilities at the moment to enter you have your temperature taken and you quzzied about health and recent travel and then if you pass you get a sticker. This dispenser would eliminate any contact with the sticker roll.
The manual unit linked to above still requires someone to pull the backing to power the mechanism. ( which is similar to theopperation of the cardboard box the stickers come in )
6 year old me would be delighted by the task of having to put tons of stickers everywhere. There. Problem solved.
Just kid-ding.
Gaah my jokes get worse and worse!
My wife had one made by Avery that was manually operated. It saved a little time when you had 100 mailing labels to stick on a newsletter. It worked on full sheets, which would be a good mod for this gadget.