As the world of electronics makes its inexorable movement from through-hole parts to surface-mount, it’s easy to forget about the humble wire-ended resistor. But a stack of them is still a very useful resource for any experimenter, and most of us probably have a bunch of them with their accompanying twin strips of tape. We’re entranced by [Sandeep]’s automated resistor tape cutting machine, which uses a fearsome looking pair of motorized knives to slice the tape into predetermined lengths.
At its heart is an Arduino and a set of stepper drivers, and it uses a PCB that he’s designed as a multipurpose board for motor-based projects. One motor advances the reel of resistors, while the other two operate those knives that simultaneously slice the two tapes. The whole is held in a wooden frame with 3D-printed parts, and control is through a touch screen. This feels more like an industrial machine than a maker project, and as can be seen in the video below, it makes short work of those tapes. Full details can be found on his website, including code.
We’ve not had so many through hole tape cutters, but we’ve seen at least one SMD cutter.
But! One of the nyloc nuts is on the wrong way! Can’t watch!
Haha. You’re gonna build one just to turn that nut around, aren’t you?
Nice machine, Sandeep!
Very nice. It appears to rely on programmed constants to determine how many resistors per feeder stepper steps. What about having a counter circuit, maybe based on a led-photodiode set?
The thin wires of the resistor might not be enough to trigger a led-photodiode circuit. I was thinking a gear wheel like the tractor drive of an old dot matrix printer.
get a 3$ presentence sensor and mount it below in the middle of the body … its industrial leggo that has been been in though hole pick n place machines since the 60’s
That cutting mechanism is quite the good idea! I guess quite many of us would’ve taken the standard route of cutting parallel and downwards against a piece of cutting mat.
The mechanism he used avoids all kinds of issues like buildup of tape and glue on the mat…
More Cowbell!
This is really cool! I was confused a bit by the description, but it’s way cooler than I expected. Cutting the tape into segments, not cutting the resistors off the tape. Looks super awesome for folks putting together kits.
Hello, great machine, I am very interested to one, how can I?
Thank you.