Mass Production Demo

Let's automate the production of 200 coasters with no human intervention.

Coasters were cut from a standard sheet of 1/8" birch plywood.

I set up the table saw fence and cut them all into strips

I made a small crosscut sled that was set to make squares when aligned with the edge. It made cutting them all very easy.

All cut. That was a lot more coasters than I expected when I started.

All edges have been deburred and are ready to be engraved.

This is the fixture I made for the arm to drop the coasters into to be engraved.

I drilled holes in the CPU cooler mounts and the piece of polycarbonate I would be using to make this toolhead.

Measuring the distances for the 4th axis that would later hold the vacuum gripper that will pick and place the coasters.

All measured and cutting off the pieces that are not needed.

Doing my first dry fit. I think this will work well.

Measuring and attaching the 4th axis motor.

I retrofitted an old pulley I used for a previous project after I

accidentally broke the smaller pulley you see above and behind. In the

end it was a good thing, I had to use the other pulley anyway.

The suction cup is spring loaded to know when it's hit the top of a

pile. Whenever possible I like to program my robots like a drunk

walking down a hallway ;)

Bringing in the Raspberries :)

This is pretty much the most important part of the Processing script that ran the whole job.

The arm was running Marlin at this point and I made some special M

codes that would send strings out the serial port on command. The

M400() calls finish every move that's in the buffer and the

SERIAL_PROTOCOLPGM("XXXXX") commands send a string to the Raspberry Pi

which is running the whole job.

This was actually the first prototype for the evezor arm. I call them NOtotypes (the minimum viable prototype that will test critical aspects of a part) It failed miserably but I learned what I needed to look for when designing the next iteration.

Same pieces I just had it on upside down.

The sled is complete with 608zz ball bearings as wheels.

I built the track the sled would run down.

The sled would be actuated with a belt so the mounts had to be fairly strong, so I made a dado joint. Such class ;)

This is the idler pulley. I looked around the shop for different materials for the belt and it turned out telephone wire performed the best. Who would have thought?

This is the idler pulley. I looked around the shop for different

materials for the belt and it turned out telephone wire performed the

best. Who would have thought?

Mounted and you can see the RAMPS board that performs the motion control for the slider.

A shot of the slider all assembled. Sorry I didn't get a good shot of the stepper mount on the far side.

On to the camera controller. This was a picture I sent to my

Photographer (Thank you World Touch Productions for all your help!!) to

make sure I got the right connectors for the shutter controllers.

Whenever possible I prefer not to cut wires. So I soldered the wires directly to the switches. The top contact is ground, the middle contact is for the auto-focus and the bottom contact is for the shutter.

I carved out the side so the wires could fit through and I could reattach the tops.