New Electronic component feeders

[dhodge]

I have had my liteplacer for a couple of years now, always found the lack of feeders to be a big limiting factor to its ease of use.
Over the last couple of years I have had on and off attempts at solving this problem, at least for my own use, now at the point where I have 8mm feeders working, a few tweeks needed on 12mm feeders which are 8 mm feeders with reel holder and top of feeder exchanged for bigger versions.

Most of the feeder is 3d printed, including gears etc, there is a pcb, motor and a bearing in addition to screws etc.

Please see youtube video below, would welcome any comments, both good and bad.

Video: [youtube]https://youtu.be/9GRHdkhfP7Q[/youtube]

[AnalysIR]

Looks great...

Comments etc:
- What s/w are you running LP or openPNP?
- The grey one looks like a manual feeder option???
- The hole required in the table could be an issue for some/many existing users. Is the a way to invert the position of these feeders??? or mount on table edge?
- Have you published any details on the design...motors, pcb etc
- Have you considered using PCBs as the side walls. Can be relatively cheap to order them from china. (Could also remove the need for the existing PCB)
- How is the clear tape cover removed/disposed
- BTW: just having 8mm reels supported would be a big win
- How many reels will fit on a typical LP? or at least on your existing setup
- Is it easy to replace a reel?

Finally, are you planning on selling them & at what $$$.

[dhodge]

I am running openpnp, not the latest version but one from 2022.
The gray one is manual option, have multiple sized ones which I used before the electronic ones were ready.
The mounting options are limited as the rail delivering power and RS485 messages connects through a spring pin connector, to mount to a table would just require a cut out, what I have is a box which was a moment of madness idea as I was not sure how I was going to mount originally.

Pic Showing spring pins

20230509_185405[1].jpg (7.62 MiB) Viewed 9757 times

Please turn a blind eye to some of the holes which go nowhere, this is an old rev and not needing to reprint just to fill some holes.
The square holes are also not required any more, they too were a previous version.

I have not published any details as of yet as I am not sure what I will do with it.

Thought about pcbs as side walls but mounting stepper motor and spacing gears could be troublesome, the feeder chassis is 3d printed and is not a big problem.

The clear tape cover is partially removed from the tape but still fixed on one side, it stays with the tape and is fed out of the bottom with the tape.

The feeder is 14.5mm wide and can be placed right next to each other if needed, a gap is desirable to make removal of feeder easier but not essential.

The easiest way to replace a wheel is to remove the feeder from the rail, it just lifts out, there are no catches holding it in place, the weight of the spool holds it in place.

Regarding selling them, I am not sure at this stage, still working on the full range of sizes and a few smoothing out of the kinks.

[AnalysIR]

The clear tape cover is partially removed from the tape but still fixed on one side, it stays with the tape and is fed out of the bottom with the tape.

Neat idea, I don't recall seeing that before. So the tape is essentially being pushed by the stepper and the cover comes off partially & reliably.

Also: How do you control/limit the forward movement for each part?

[JuKu]

The clear tape cover is partially removed from the tape but still fixed on one side, it stays with the tape and is fed out of the bottom with the tape.

Neat idea, I don't recall seeing that before.

I might have. Of course, I haven’t seen the details of this very neat project, but this detail sounds awfully close to one scheme protected by a patent.