I'm almost 100% certain I'm never going to need to make something like this, but I love the series so much. A lot to learn and appreciate from the thought and build process. Keep up the amazing work.
Intention to inspire. When you need something there will a idea on how you can get it. I build many machines some came out off nowwhere some from seeing other machines. Start building today it leads to wonders.
@@BMSWEB 🔴 What Is Islam? 🔴 Islam is not just another religion. 🔵 It is the same message preached by Moses, Jesus and Abraham. 🔴 Islam literally means ‘submission to God’ and it teaches us to have a direct relationship with God. 🔵 It reminds us that since God created us, no one should be worshipped except God alone. 🔴 It also teaches that God is nothing like a human being or like anything that we can imagine. 🌍 The concept of God is summarized in the Quran as: 📖 { “Say, He is God, the One. God, the Absolute. He does not give birth, nor was He born, and there is nothing like Him.”} (Quran 112:1-4) 📚 🔴 Becoming a Muslim is not turning your back to Jesus. 🔵 Rather it’s going back to the original teachings of Jesus and obeying him. More ....
Absolute art! You are true inspiration for me. Comprehensive yet compact explanations, clear graphics and beautiful components, I could not give you enough praise.
it's helpful to more precisely characterize the problem. you're correct that discontinuities in the walls of the channel the nuts are sliding down will cause a jam, but not all discontinuities. if there is a ledge, that's an opportunity to snag, but if it's an overhang, the discontinuity is facing the wrong way for the nut to grab on. so you could increase your tolerance by having the channel in the lower mating parts slightly wider than the channel in the upper mating parts, and then gradually taper back to the original width so that this can be cascaded without exiting your width tolerance. to be clear I'm talking about a fraction of a millimeter extra width, and multiple centimeters of channel for the taper, so the actual angle of the taper would be miniscule
The issue is that this extra space allows the nuts to spin a little, and then the leading corner of the nut before it can slide besides the trailing corner of the nut that has more room, and jam both between each other and the walls as seen on 7:47. I feel the better solution would be to widen the channel enough so that nuts can pass through when they are at their widest, being that instead of touching the sides with a flat edge, they can touch the sides of the slide with their corner edge. This way nuts cant jam each other since they will just spin until they are hitting each other with the flat edge and come to stable rest like that. Also their slanted corners will help slide past inaccuracies.
@@BartJBols the nuts slide freely, therefore there's already a bit of clearance. so there's got to be some range of clearances that would work, it's just a question of whether that range is large enough to be useful for what I suggested. as for widening to allow for the nuts to rotate 30 degrees: I think the point of the design is to constrain the nuts to only one possible orientation. the one it's constrained to is the worse of the two options, but it has the benefit of being the narrower one, so you can use that to guarantee all the nuts will be in that orientation and thus have the same stacking height
@@BartJBols it is forbidden to allow the hexagon to roll until flat slide down. down below at the sprocket metering mechanism, it is key that the nuts always come down in identical orientation to ensure equal spacing between every single nut in the buffer. this is only possible if they always come flat side down or always come vertex down. i don't see how the former can be guaranteed, but the latter can be by keeping tunnel width between 2*radius and 2*apothem. a carefully designed sprocket may be able to deal with different orientations but it is likely a new node of reliability that is not worth introducing. the problem will be magnified with smaller nuts.
1. if that's the bottom side then it could be from the PEI magnetic build plate that left that kind of finish 2.Bambu lab slicer has an option to assing what kind of finish the top surface would be if this was oriented to be the top surface 3. designed it himself in CAD
Hi Christopher, have you though about putting a worm and worm wheel on this design it will let you put the NEMA 17 motor at an angle of 90 degrees right above your feeding wheel. You will have an immediate reduction that is big enough and a worm wheel can't drive the worm. Keep it up! It looks amazing!
Right now the sprocket is only marginally smaller than the motor (judging by eye, it's so close I may be wrong). If the sprocket could be moved to either of the slim faces of the magazine then a NEMA17 & worm gear would have a huge reduction, more than half of the width. I can't see why this would be a problem with nuts, but bolts are less clear to me.
@@Ziraya0 what you get in reduction you pay for in friction, especially for worm gears. that's another part that will become a consumable. it will also be multiples slower in metering. i believe the current implementation is a 2x reduction and it is already sufficient to prevent backdriving the stepper by a full magazine of bolts.
I'm hoping that the Opulo folks catch sight of this. You both seem to be working in the same mid-scale-manufacturing domain, with some very compatible design philosophies.
It’s surprising how fascinating it is to watch you go through this process. You do a great job thinking about the various end-users. Thank you for sharing this!
Wonderful work! I came across your channel on the last video and you have quickly risen to be my favorite channel with a focus on novel manufacturing techniques. Given your simultaneously stellar project designs and video production, I can't wait to watch your channel grow! All the best
Your Content is so inspiring, to not give up on tiny problems and step a little back and take a other view on your own ideas for a simple but brilliant update on the product. In this country we need more type of pragmatic engineers of your kind.
(Oh boy, this is a long one) I'm glad to see a sprocket design handles nuts just fine; I was worried about how it would handle anything besides screws. Have you been able to test with washers yet? Out of common hardware types, I think washers might be one of the more difficult ones to get working with a sprocket-based metering system. That repackaged gearbox is very nice. Not just in looks, but I also appreciate all the little functional details: the 'sprocket' being easy to swap helps for replacing worn out components, like you mentioned, but it also also makes it easy to swap between different hardware types; also, sliding the dispenser block directly into the light grey guide rails is a super clean integration and leaves room for even larger diameter sprockets if required. I do have a point of design feedback on the gearbox: Conventional wisdom says that greasing the gearbox would have huge advantages for service life. But this iteration cannot be greased because the indexing sprocket would almost certainly carry some of that grease out to the hardware it is dispensing--not good. I'm sure you already thought of that; but I say it to set up my suggestion: move the indexing sprocket outside of the main gearbox casing, and power it by a live axel output shaft. To keep the gearbox and motor within the magazine tube profile would probably require flipping the motor around. Off the top of my head I'm picturing something like this (in the sense that the motor and output shaft project from the same face of a power transmission system): wcproducts.com/collections/gearboxes/products/versaplanetary-180-drive This has two big pros in my mind: - Allows the gearbox to be greased, extending service life - Easier to see the wear condition of the indexing sprocket - Easier access to motor wires Downsides I've though of so far are: - Reduced mechanism visibility to the user - Slightly increased gearbox height - Might increase the number of steps for sprocket replacement (Maybe just make the end support arm for the output shaft removable? Idk, that's probably getting too specific for a text explanation.) On a separate note, I love the idea of the magazine quick lock. But I can't help worrying about the fatigue life of the flexing section of the orange clip/bracket. I have a suggestion for indexing the magazines: Extend the light grey guide rails up to interface with the... spout thing (the component you show at 6:07). What I'm picturing is that loading a new magazine would be an upward motion, not a horizontal one. This would of course require some kind of locking/latching mechanism that would actively force the top of the magazine stack against the bottom of the spout once a magazine is loaded, in order to avoid any gap. About the alignment issue more broadly, I think there's a chance that the alignment tolerance could be made less sensitive by extending the spout downwards (essentially just do a CAD "extrude" command out from the spout's exit face) so that the nuts have a straight section after the bend and before they reach the spout/magazine transition point. My gut feeling is that would reduce the rotation forces acting on the nuts by the time they cross that point, possibly making them less sensitive to small misalignments or gaps. At least, I hope that's the case, because even though dowel pins are definitely superior to screws for locating parts in an assembly, those dowel pins are still inserted into an FDM 3D print, so the overall locational accuracy is still only as good at 3D print which is, as you noted, not super precise. Finally, one trick that might help to completely avoid gaps between mating faces like this is to add a *slightly* raised lip around the edge in question (like, only tenths of a millimeter high). That makes sure that if the mating faces are brought into contact, the raised lip *must* be the first point to close off, even if the mating surface is slightly out of flat (which is almost guaranteed with FDM printing). Wow that got even longer than I expected. And that's saying something. Looking forward to the next video!
So many lessons in this. Reducing part for ease of assembly. Clear windows to aid debugging. Hatches to access wear parts. Making wear parts easy to identify. Don't use threaded holes for locating. Dual purpose design of a dowel pin + flexure locking alignment system.
Thanks for these productions! Your design approach is highly commendable, and in my opinion represents the top echelon of design methodologies which help manage the engineering of very complex systems. After years of designing various industrial machines, I discovered the modular approach to be absolutely superior than the old-school "single frame" approach. While the modular philosophy requires significantly more design work to split machine sections into interchangeable sub-assemblies, the approach provides invaluable flexibility when one part of a system under development fails to meet expectations. This becomes increasingly convenient as the complexity of systems under development increases, especially when the project includes a mix of proven parts/assemblies to be integrated with experimental or unproven ones. It stands to reason that is far easier to make design changes for a simple subassembly than it is to rearrange the typical pivots, shaft centers, gear/sprocket modules etc. in a conventional layout, even for plate-frame assemblies, but you can't blame us old-timers for taking the "simpler" approach "back in the day", because before CAD/CAM, when everything was designed on paper by hand, the time required to modularize machinery (or even have a selection of OTS parts) was unthinkable due to prohibitive expense, so our goal was to "get it right the first time" because every ECO subtracted from the bottom line. Now, I can simulate every engineered component of a complex system, from mechanical drives, power systems, materials attributes, fluid flow, heat transfer, etc., to digital control systems themselves, thanks to virtualized computing and networking, and use these through many different iterations before a final design is selected for prototyping and testing. Love ya NASTRANS, COSMOL, and National Instruments!!!!
Congrats on your video getting into my recommended just 30 minutes after being published despite me never have been watching your channel before. The video is interesting, thanks!
Your comment at 3:20 is perfect and so true. Some people want to print EVERYTHING....like, why?? There’s so many better and cheap options out there for many scenarios haha. Excellent work! Keep it up.
Hi and thank you! Yes I am definitely considering it. I have not yet decided in what form the files will be released. At this stage I'm focusing on getting it completed and functional - but I hope finally, in some way you will be able to build it.
@@christopherhelmke I agree, I would gladly pay for the files to print necessary parts myself, as I also sell 3D prints and have to manually bag four each of three different types of nuts and bolts, it can be very tedious.
Lieber @@christopherhelmke Great process and presentation. I am seriously in love with the material colors of the 3d Prints. Please share what filaments you used for the dark-grey, gray, white and orange parts!
Feels like a gate system for the magazine inlet/outlets will touch on a lot of the issues you're dealing with. I'm thinking about all sorts of ways to bridge the interface between conduits. Carefully changing angles could help, compliant mechanisms at the boundary could help, smooth sheet plastic inserts could help, like strips of acrylic/PET/etc that line chute, either entirely or just near the boundary. I think you might see a benefit from adding a freewheel sprocket across the interface which will interleave it's fingers between parts to break up trains.
Have you considered doing some kind of distributed controls for these removable parts magazines? Once filled and taken to a remote workstation, the attached motor can still be commanded to dispense the desired number of components? Love this series, and please continue to share your incredible engineering designs with us!
Haven't seen previous videos so maybe there is a reason, but why didnt you use flat head screws on the rotating bit? So the arm didnt have to go over the screw heads? Not a huge increase in efficiency, but it'd be 3 more screws you could do and a little less wear and tear on the arm.
Awesome to follow your process here; I learn a lot (I'll likely never end up building bolt sorting robots, but you have a lot of interesting design principles and process). The explanations, illustrations and overall production quality of your videos are super inspirational as well!
Is it a possibility to use some thin metal strips on the insize of your cartridge system or the bend? Thinking of hardend bandsaw blades. Or just wrapping metal band just some glue behind it and the ridges of the print will be away and way less friction
Even if you may not have a specific need for the project, it's fantastic that you still enjoy and appreciate the series. There's always something valuable to learn from the thought process and the intricate build techniques. It's inspiring to see the creativity and innovation behind such projects. Keep up the great work! 👍🌟🔧
Awesome work! Silly question/suggestion: Why not add a very subtle, long stretched, funnel-like chamfer to the entry of the light pink part at 6:58 so that even if the upper turquoise and lower pink part of the construction are offset by let’s say up to 0.5 mm (depending on the size of the conveyed nuts) doesn’t make the train of nuts to get stuck? (Grüße aus Frankfurt BTW).
I used to work in Industrial Automation - I'm very impressed that you've managed to get good repeatability with 3D Printed parts. Have you come across IGUS polymers - which give very good performance in wear parts or where low friction is required. They are available as printer filament too. I was thinking they might be a good choice for your paddle wheel.
3:28 the nut holder has an extra convex radius compared to the bolt holder. i imagine this is for increased strength. what was your thought process and calculation method to decide how and when to do this and why not do this to the bolt holder as well for aesthetic reasons? 7:45 personally i would chamfer the receiving hole even without considering this potential jamming problem. reason is that 3D printers are just so much more reliable at making a nice smooth hole when it is chamfered at the top layer. unchamfered holes often need to be deburred. so chamfering would not only give you printing reliability and lesser rework, but also functional reliability for this jamming issue by making the receiving hole slightly larger at the entrance. the width of the tunnels appear to let the nuts slide with some tolerance without allowing them to roll. i guess that preventing them from rolling is what ensures they always land in the magazine vertex down and never sometimes flat side down and that this is critical so they always maintain equal separation to allow for proper metering later on. so it looks like the width of the tunnel is somewhere in between 2*apothem and 2*radius of the hexagon. i believe for M4, this is at least 1mm of play, and you should have a little bit of room to chamfer the receiving hole while still preventing any nut from fully rotating in the tunnel. it would still be possible for a nut to get jammed at the bottom of the chamfer but what if you don't use equal chamfers? i.e. instead of a 0.2m equal chamfer, what if the tunnel was tapered from 0.2-0.4mm larger at the receiving hole but gradually tapers down to your original tunnel width some 30-40mm below? 10:04 my initial thoughts on this was it is so beautiful and satisfying when a compliant mechanism just works! however i have trauma with past experience of creep failure so i cannot stop worrying that this mechanism will eventually fail soon as the full magazine plus stepper metering module below is quite heavy. that pin catcher will eventually sag over time and the magazine will torque away and create a gap in the tunnel junction. i see you used weight supports at 10:16 bolted to the crate, but i feel that this makes the crate less portable and kind of detracts from the modular philosophy--i feel like any weight supports should be part of the module rather than the crate exterior which should be clean of any fixture especially bolted ones. but that is just my opinion. so the heavy module can have a support arm that extend down and towards one of the ledges of the crate. for the quick-lock, if you had a second catching pin for the quick lock higher up somewhere near the letter 'e' in 'Magazine' 10:11, i think that would make the tunnel junction tolerances extremely reliable in terms of the jamming issue, very tight, and also double the weight capacity...
You said “we” built. Are there stls available out there for these parts or are there multiple of you? Sorry I love the project and I would love to build one. Not rushing release if you haven’t already. Perhaps I missed the link is all.
I might be wrong, but I think you can just put a nice chamfer at the edges even if the bolt rotated slightly, it could adjust itself due the angle of the chamfer and it wouldn't stuck, I did a similar thing in a conveyor belt, and it worked no jams.
It's a good idea in theory, however without good side face location on the nut they would just pivot in the feeder and jam. Continuous guidance or complete clearance needs to be held throughout the transition.
To stop the nuts clogging where the two parts join, could you not slightly flare the second tube where it joins? So it eliminates the chance of there being a slight edge for the nut to become caught on?
Looks really nice! Though I have no use for it, I would really like to build one just for the thrill. Can the models for the system be downloaded from somewhere?
Not yet, I have not yet decided in what form the files will be published. At this stage I'm focusing on getting it completed and functional - but yes I hope finally, in some way you will be able to build it :)
Regarding lubrication: The German company igus manufactures mechanical components from plastics that do not require lubrication. They call them "motion plastics". But not only do they make various components from them, they also offer the materials for 3D printing, as filaments for FDM, powder for SLS, and recently even resin for SLA.
Regarding color coding parts with wear: consider pigment and color combination. White PLA has many pigments (naturally dark). PETG is naturally transparent afaik. For wear, black should be good: abrasion is often white giving nice contrast on a black gear.
Hey man, Love the series! I've got one suggestion to improve the quality; Speak louder, but move the mic back (To keep the overall loudness the same). By speaking louder the way you talk changes and it can (should) make an significant improvement to the video.
You mentioned laser cutting is cheap. Do you have a laser cutter? At what point could you personally justify the cost? I ask particularly because as far as I am aware, the type of laser cutter which is capable of cutting clear acrylic basically starts at 5000 dollars or 5000 euros, and I think maybe just 1000 less with one of the newer popular hobby options like the new Gweike solution.
I still believe that this is over-engineered. Ditch the magazine and sprocket. It makes it too complex. Optimizing the speed of the loader mechanism with a counting unit would be much better. The more steps, the more complexity and the more can go wrong.
You don't need perfectly matching output and input channels. Outwardly flaring the walls of the incoming channels and using the channel itself as a locating feature will solve the problem.
If you ever want to save a buck on CNC parts like your acrylic cover or aluminum and wood parts, feel free to hit me up. I'd love to support projects like these!
Great video! I didn't understand how you solved the problem with the uneven 3D-print surface that the nuts run along inside the feeder and magazine. Is its inside surface also prone to nut jamming in addition to the joint between the parts?
👏📐🛠 It's amazing to see the thought and build process behind projects like this, even if we might not personally need to make something similar. The series provides a valuable opportunity to learn and appreciate the craftsmanship and innovation involved. The Quick-Lock & Sprocket 2.0 with 3D printed automation sounds intriguing! I'm curious to see how it works and the possibilities it opens up. Keep up the fantastic work and continue inspiring us with your creations! 👍🔧🏗
Adding a small angle to the top of the magazine should solve any issues with the nuts getting stuck. This doesn't even have to be something you design into the print, simply sanding the edges down a small amount would be enough to fix the jams and should provide the angle to allow the nuts to self right back to the desired orientation if that is required.
Hello. I wanted to say that you have a really good mind for engineering and i would really like if you made tutorials on how you use the CAD. like maybe even just recordings of yourself doing it, not even having to explain it. i think i could learn a lot from it as i am about to enter college in the next two years
I’ve been searching for a video like this for so long! One of my future goals is to have a UA-cam channel making things. I tried it once, and after doing a project, setting up the camera to capture the process was so time consuming. I thought there had to be a better way. I’ve been searching for this for a long time.
20 years ago this kind of system could only be developed by a team of engineers and would be marketed to industry for tens of thousands of dollars per module.
If the footprint is important, is there any particular reason why you don't put the motor of bolt dispenser on the side to have even less footprint for the combination of nut dispenser and bolt dispenser? I mean in this case you can place the bolt dispenser motor directly below the nut dispenser motor, so they will share the same space horizontally
Does your channels need to be that tight? I might suggest making the channel on the lower part of the assembly a little larger to give you more tolerance to prevent edges and avoid jams.
As good as the design is for this assembly, why not use the stepper motor that drives the magnetic feeder plate in each basket to count parts? Doing this would also eliminate the forced turning of the nuts issue because you could make the width of the channel wide enough so the nuts can't get jammed up.
👍🏻👨🔧📚 Even though I may not have a direct use for the project, I'm absolutely hooked on this series! There's so much to learn and appreciate from the thought and build process. It's fascinating to see the Quick-Lock & Sprocket 2.0 come to life through 3D printing and automation. Keep up the amazing work, and I can't wait to see what else you create! 🙌🔥😊
I'm almost 100% certain I'm never going to need to make something like this, but I love the series so much. A lot to learn and appreciate from the thought and build process. Keep up the amazing work.
Intention to inspire.
When you need something there will a idea on how you can get it.
I build many machines some came out off nowwhere some from seeing other machines.
Start building today it leads to wonders.
I don't need it, but I want to have it. Just for the joy of using it
The amount of thought and testing alone is incredible.
@@BMSWEB 🔴 What Is Islam?
🔴 Islam is not just another religion.
🔵 It is the same message preached by Moses, Jesus and Abraham.
🔴 Islam literally means ‘submission to God’ and it teaches us to have a direct relationship with God.
🔵 It reminds us that since God created us, no one should be worshipped except God alone.
🔴 It also teaches that God is nothing like a human being or like anything that we can imagine.
🌍 The concept of God is summarized in the Quran as:
📖 { “Say, He is God, the One. God, the Absolute. He does not give birth, nor was He born, and there is nothing like Him.”} (Quran 112:1-4) 📚
🔴 Becoming a Muslim is not turning your back to Jesus.
🔵 Rather it’s going back to the original teachings of Jesus and obeying him.
More ....
Absolute art! You are true inspiration for me.
Comprehensive yet compact explanations, clear graphics and beautiful components, I could not give you enough praise.
it's helpful to more precisely characterize the problem. you're correct that discontinuities in the walls of the channel the nuts are sliding down will cause a jam, but not all discontinuities. if there is a ledge, that's an opportunity to snag, but if it's an overhang, the discontinuity is facing the wrong way for the nut to grab on. so you could increase your tolerance by having the channel in the lower mating parts slightly wider than the channel in the upper mating parts, and then gradually taper back to the original width so that this can be cascaded without exiting your width tolerance. to be clear I'm talking about a fraction of a millimeter extra width, and multiple centimeters of channel for the taper, so the actual angle of the taper would be miniscule
The issue is that this extra space allows the nuts to spin a little, and then the leading corner of the nut before it can slide besides the trailing corner of the nut that has more room, and jam both between each other and the walls as seen on 7:47. I feel the better solution would be to widen the channel enough so that nuts can pass through when they are at their widest, being that instead of touching the sides with a flat edge, they can touch the sides of the slide with their corner edge. This way nuts cant jam each other since they will just spin until they are hitting each other with the flat edge and come to stable rest like that. Also their slanted corners will help slide past inaccuracies.
@@BartJBols the nuts slide freely, therefore there's already a bit of clearance. so there's got to be some range of clearances that would work, it's just a question of whether that range is large enough to be useful for what I suggested.
as for widening to allow for the nuts to rotate 30 degrees: I think the point of the design is to constrain the nuts to only one possible orientation. the one it's constrained to is the worse of the two options, but it has the benefit of being the narrower one, so you can use that to guarantee all the nuts will be in that orientation and thus have the same stacking height
@@BartJBols it is forbidden to allow the hexagon to roll until flat slide down. down below at the sprocket metering mechanism, it is key that the nuts always come down in identical orientation to ensure equal spacing between every single nut in the buffer. this is only possible if they always come flat side down or always come vertex down. i don't see how the former can be guaranteed, but the latter can be by keeping tunnel width between 2*radius and 2*apothem. a carefully designed sprocket may be able to deal with different orientations but it is likely a new node of reliability that is not worth introducing. the problem will be magnified with smaller nuts.
This series is great!
Question: how do you get that finish on your 3d Prints? (as seen on the orange quick lock part at 10:04)
1. if that's the bottom side then it could be from the PEI magnetic build plate that left that kind of finish
2.Bambu lab slicer has an option to assing what kind of finish the top surface would be if this was oriented to be the top surface
3. designed it himself in CAD
Love how you explain your thought process and stay criticial to your design. Very inspirational, keep up good work!
Hi Christopher, have you though about putting a worm and worm wheel on this design it will let you put the NEMA 17 motor at an angle of 90 degrees right above your feeding wheel. You will have an immediate reduction that is big enough and a worm wheel can't drive the worm. Keep it up! It looks amazing!
It will be way more compact this way.
Right now the sprocket is only marginally smaller than the motor (judging by eye, it's so close I may be wrong). If the sprocket could be moved to either of the slim faces of the magazine then a NEMA17 & worm gear would have a huge reduction, more than half of the width. I can't see why this would be a problem with nuts, but bolts are less clear to me.
@@Ziraya0 what you get in reduction you pay for in friction, especially for worm gears. that's another part that will become a consumable. it will also be multiples slower in metering. i believe the current implementation is a 2x reduction and it is already sufficient to prevent backdriving the stepper by a full magazine of bolts.
Wie du einfach aus dem absoluten Nichts auftauchst und so geniale Videos / Projekte machst. Mega 👌🏽
Dachte schon ich bin der einzige der das so sieht 🤝
Your industrial engineering insights are great; different color for wear components, and operators seeing how a machine works helps them diagnose it.
I'm hoping that the Opulo folks catch sight of this. You both seem to be working in the same mid-scale-manufacturing domain, with some very compatible design philosophies.
It’s surprising how fascinating it is to watch you go through this process. You do a great job thinking about the various end-users. Thank you for sharing this!
This is impressive; looking forward to watching your progress on the project!
Wonderful work! I came across your channel on the last video and you have quickly risen to be my favorite channel with a focus on novel manufacturing techniques. Given your simultaneously stellar project designs and video production, I can't wait to watch your channel grow! All the best
Your Content is so inspiring, to not give up on tiny problems and step a little back and take a other view on your own ideas for a simple but brilliant update on the product. In this country we need more type of pragmatic engineers of your kind.
This is crazy amount of effort
Video's great but please make the volume louder, I had to put my volume at almost 100% to even start hearing you
Great stuff! Thanks for sharing! Systems Engineering at its finest!
Incredible content as always!
Absolutely excellent! Keep up the good work!
In this age of click bait title and Shorts, you are a true content creator.
Love the magazine quicklock feature
(Oh boy, this is a long one)
I'm glad to see a sprocket design handles nuts just fine; I was worried about how it would handle anything besides screws. Have you been able to test with washers yet? Out of common hardware types, I think washers might be one of the more difficult ones to get working with a sprocket-based metering system.
That repackaged gearbox is very nice. Not just in looks, but I also appreciate all the little functional details: the 'sprocket' being easy to swap helps for replacing worn out components, like you mentioned, but it also also makes it easy to swap between different hardware types; also, sliding the dispenser block directly into the light grey guide rails is a super clean integration and leaves room for even larger diameter sprockets if required.
I do have a point of design feedback on the gearbox:
Conventional wisdom says that greasing the gearbox would have huge advantages for service life. But this iteration cannot be greased because the indexing sprocket would almost certainly carry some of that grease out to the hardware it is dispensing--not good. I'm sure you already thought of that; but I say it to set up my suggestion: move the indexing sprocket outside of the main gearbox casing, and power it by a live axel output shaft.
To keep the gearbox and motor within the magazine tube profile would probably require flipping the motor around. Off the top of my head I'm picturing something like this (in the sense that the motor and output shaft project from the same face of a power transmission system):
wcproducts.com/collections/gearboxes/products/versaplanetary-180-drive
This has two big pros in my mind:
- Allows the gearbox to be greased, extending service life
- Easier to see the wear condition of the indexing sprocket
- Easier access to motor wires
Downsides I've though of so far are:
- Reduced mechanism visibility to the user
- Slightly increased gearbox height
- Might increase the number of steps for sprocket replacement (Maybe just make the end support arm for the output shaft removable? Idk, that's probably getting too specific for a text explanation.)
On a separate note, I love the idea of the magazine quick lock. But I can't help worrying about the fatigue life of the flexing section of the orange clip/bracket.
I have a suggestion for indexing the magazines: Extend the light grey guide rails up to interface with the... spout thing (the component you show at 6:07). What I'm picturing is that loading a new magazine would be an upward motion, not a horizontal one. This would of course require some kind of locking/latching mechanism that would actively force the top of the magazine stack against the bottom of the spout once a magazine is loaded, in order to avoid any gap.
About the alignment issue more broadly, I think there's a chance that the alignment tolerance could be made less sensitive by extending the spout downwards (essentially just do a CAD "extrude" command out from the spout's exit face) so that the nuts have a straight section after the bend and before they reach the spout/magazine transition point. My gut feeling is that would reduce the rotation forces acting on the nuts by the time they cross that point, possibly making them less sensitive to small misalignments or gaps.
At least, I hope that's the case, because even though dowel pins are definitely superior to screws for locating parts in an assembly, those dowel pins are still inserted into an FDM 3D print, so the overall locational accuracy is still only as good at 3D print which is, as you noted, not super precise.
Finally, one trick that might help to completely avoid gaps between mating faces like this is to add a *slightly* raised lip around the edge in question (like, only tenths of a millimeter high). That makes sure that if the mating faces are brought into contact, the raised lip *must* be the first point to close off, even if the mating surface is slightly out of flat (which is almost guaranteed with FDM printing).
Wow that got even longer than I expected. And that's saying something.
Looking forward to the next video!
I love your engineering insights, your channel is brilliant
So many lessons in this. Reducing part for ease of assembly. Clear windows to aid debugging. Hatches to access wear parts. Making wear parts easy to identify. Don't use threaded holes for locating. Dual purpose design of a dowel pin + flexure locking alignment system.
Thanks for these productions!
Your design approach is highly commendable, and in my opinion represents the top echelon of design methodologies which help manage the engineering of very complex systems.
After years of designing various industrial machines, I discovered the modular approach to be absolutely superior than the old-school "single frame" approach. While the modular philosophy requires significantly more design work to split machine sections into interchangeable sub-assemblies, the approach provides invaluable flexibility when one part of a system under development fails to meet expectations. This becomes increasingly convenient as the complexity of systems under development increases, especially when the project includes a mix of proven parts/assemblies to be integrated with experimental or unproven ones.
It stands to reason that is far easier to make design changes for a simple subassembly than it is to rearrange the typical pivots, shaft centers, gear/sprocket modules etc. in a conventional layout, even for plate-frame assemblies, but you can't blame us old-timers for taking the "simpler" approach "back in the day", because before CAD/CAM, when everything was designed on paper by hand, the time required to modularize machinery (or even have a selection of OTS parts) was unthinkable due to prohibitive expense, so our goal was to "get it right the first time" because every ECO subtracted from the bottom line.
Now, I can simulate every engineered component of a complex system, from mechanical drives, power systems, materials attributes, fluid flow, heat transfer, etc., to digital control systems themselves, thanks to virtualized computing and networking, and use these through many different iterations before a final design is selected for prototyping and testing. Love ya NASTRANS, COSMOL, and National Instruments!!!!
I love this channel😍 Thank you so much for this SUPER COOL content! 😎Looking forward to the next video. Keep it up!
Thank you!
Congrats on your video getting into my recommended just 30 minutes after being published despite me never have been watching your channel before. The video is interesting, thanks!
Why do you have an arm that moves out of the way of the bolts instead of using flush countersunk bolts?
Your comment at 3:20 is perfect and so true. Some people want to print EVERYTHING....like, why?? There’s so many better and cheap options out there for many scenarios haha. Excellent work! Keep it up.
it is a luxury and privilege to be able to say something like that though. for example, having a 3d printer AND a laser cutter.
The idea with magazines at personal workspaces shows how innovative your ideas are, keep going!
What material did you use to print this? Such a cool project. Thank you for sharing your insight!
Great series! Keep it up! I don’t know that I have a need for this but would you ever consider making the 3D models available?
Hi and thank you! Yes I am definitely considering it. I have not yet decided in what form the files will be released. At this stage I'm focusing on getting it completed and functional - but I hope finally, in some way you will be able to build it.
@@christopherhelmke I agree, I would gladly pay for the files to print necessary parts myself, as I also sell 3D prints and have to manually bag four each of three different types of nuts and bolts, it can be very tedious.
Lieber @@christopherhelmke Great process and presentation.
I am seriously in love with the material colors of the 3d Prints. Please share what filaments you used for the dark-grey, gray, white and orange parts!
Feels like a gate system for the magazine inlet/outlets will touch on a lot of the issues you're dealing with. I'm thinking about all sorts of ways to bridge the interface between conduits. Carefully changing angles could help, compliant mechanisms at the boundary could help, smooth sheet plastic inserts could help, like strips of acrylic/PET/etc that line chute, either entirely or just near the boundary. I think you might see a benefit from adding a freewheel sprocket across the interface which will interleave it's fingers between parts to break up trains.
It quickly became my favorite channel…
You're only the channel like this that I actually turned on notifications for
🤔 what about multi color so you can see the wear via depth?
Have you considered doing some kind of distributed controls for these removable parts magazines? Once filled and taken to a remote workstation, the attached motor can still be commanded to dispense the desired number of components? Love this series, and please continue to share your incredible engineering designs with us!
Haven't seen previous videos so maybe there is a reason, but why didnt you use flat head screws on the rotating bit? So the arm didnt have to go over the screw heads? Not a huge increase in efficiency, but it'd be 3 more screws you could do and a little less wear and tear on the arm.
Awesome to follow your process here; I learn a lot (I'll likely never end up building bolt sorting robots, but you have a lot of interesting design principles and process). The explanations, illustrations and overall production quality of your videos are super inspirational as well!
Is it a possibility to use some thin metal strips on the insize of your cartridge system or the bend? Thinking of hardend bandsaw blades. Or just wrapping metal band just some glue behind it and the ridges of the print will be away and way less friction
Even if you may not have a specific need for the project, it's fantastic that you still enjoy and appreciate the series. There's always something valuable to learn from the thought process and the intricate build techniques. It's inspiring to see the creativity and innovation behind such projects. Keep up the great work! 👍🌟🔧
7:27 - put a small chamfer in the pink area with a largest radius to the lower section. (Time of writing 7:30)
I was also thinking the magazine slot could be just slightly oversized at the top and then taper back to the desired width over an inch or so.
I love the idea of filling up magasines for use anywhere, sounds pratical
Awesome work! Silly question/suggestion: Why not add a very subtle, long stretched, funnel-like chamfer to the entry of the light pink part at 6:58 so that even if the upper turquoise and lower pink part of the construction are offset by let’s say up to 0.5 mm (depending on the size of the conveyed nuts) doesn’t make the train of nuts to get stuck? (Grüße aus Frankfurt BTW).
I used to work in Industrial Automation - I'm very impressed that you've managed to get good repeatability with 3D Printed parts.
Have you come across IGUS polymers - which give very good performance in wear parts or where low friction is required. They are available as printer filament too. I was thinking they might be a good choice for your paddle wheel.
3:28 the nut holder has an extra convex radius compared to the bolt holder. i imagine this is for increased strength. what was your thought process and calculation method to decide how and when to do this and why not do this to the bolt holder as well for aesthetic reasons?
7:45 personally i would chamfer the receiving hole even without considering this potential jamming problem. reason is that 3D printers are just so much more reliable at making a nice smooth hole when it is chamfered at the top layer. unchamfered holes often need to be deburred. so chamfering would not only give you printing reliability and lesser rework, but also functional reliability for this jamming issue by making the receiving hole slightly larger at the entrance. the width of the tunnels appear to let the nuts slide with some tolerance without allowing them to roll. i guess that preventing them from rolling is what ensures they always land in the magazine vertex down and never sometimes flat side down and that this is critical so they always maintain equal separation to allow for proper metering later on. so it looks like the width of the tunnel is somewhere in between 2*apothem and 2*radius of the hexagon. i believe for M4, this is at least 1mm of play, and you should have a little bit of room to chamfer the receiving hole while still preventing any nut from fully rotating in the tunnel. it would still be possible for a nut to get jammed at the bottom of the chamfer but what if you don't use equal chamfers? i.e. instead of a 0.2m equal chamfer, what if the tunnel was tapered from 0.2-0.4mm larger at the receiving hole but gradually tapers down to your original tunnel width some 30-40mm below?
10:04 my initial thoughts on this was it is so beautiful and satisfying when a compliant mechanism just works! however i have trauma with past experience of creep failure so i cannot stop worrying that this mechanism will eventually fail soon as the full magazine plus stepper metering module below is quite heavy. that pin catcher will eventually sag over time and the magazine will torque away and create a gap in the tunnel junction. i see you used weight supports at 10:16 bolted to the crate, but i feel that this makes the crate less portable and kind of detracts from the modular philosophy--i feel like any weight supports should be part of the module rather than the crate exterior which should be clean of any fixture especially bolted ones. but that is just my opinion. so the heavy module can have a support arm that extend down and towards one of the ledges of the crate. for the quick-lock, if you had a second catching pin for the quick lock higher up somewhere near the letter 'e' in 'Magazine' 10:11, i think that would make the tunnel junction tolerances extremely reliable in terms of the jamming issue, very tight, and also double the weight capacity...
You said “we” built. Are there stls available out there for these parts or are there multiple of you? Sorry I love the project and I would love to build one. Not rushing release if you haven’t already. Perhaps I missed the link is all.
I might be wrong, but I think you can just put a nice chamfer at the edges even if the bolt rotated slightly, it could adjust itself due the angle of the chamfer and it wouldn't stuck, I did a similar thing in a conveyor belt, and it worked no jams.
Fantastic work as always! Thanks for producing this.
The factory must grow!
There I can buy this STL files,this can be very helpful for my new project
I really like this series and the overengineering, but why not just buy or build a vibratory bowl feeder at this point?
7:52 Have you thought of chamfering or filleting the problematic edges where they meet? That way there is not as sharp of an edge anymore.
It's a good idea in theory, however without good side face location on the nut they would just pivot in the feeder and jam. Continuous guidance or complete clearance needs to be held throughout the transition.
To stop the nuts clogging where the two parts join, could you not slightly flare the second tube where it joins? So it eliminates the chance of there being a slight edge for the nut to become caught on?
Looks really nice! Though I have no use for it, I would really like to build one just for the thrill. Can the models for the system be downloaded from somewhere?
Not yet, I have not yet decided in what form the files will be published. At this stage I'm focusing on getting it completed and functional - but yes I hope finally, in some way you will be able to build it :)
After watching this video my 3D designs look so primitive :)
Regarding lubrication: The German company igus manufactures mechanical components from plastics that do not require lubrication. They call them "motion plastics". But not only do they make various components from them, they also offer the materials for 3D printing, as filaments for FDM, powder for SLS, and recently even resin for SLA.
Regarding color coding parts with wear: consider pigment and color combination. White PLA has many pigments (naturally dark). PETG is naturally transparent afaik. For wear, black should be good: abrasion is often white giving nice contrast on a black gear.
Excellent work as always!
Hey man, Love the series!
I've got one suggestion to improve the quality; Speak louder, but move the mic back (To keep the overall loudness the same). By speaking louder the way you talk changes and it can (should) make an significant improvement to the video.
Oh dude... That quick release mag... UGH
That's so satisfying... You are a god!
You mentioned laser cutting is cheap. Do you have a laser cutter? At what point could you personally justify the cost? I ask particularly because as far as I am aware, the type of laser cutter which is capable of cutting clear acrylic basically starts at 5000 dollars or 5000 euros, and I think maybe just 1000 less with one of the newer popular hobby options like the new Gweike solution.
I still believe that this is over-engineered. Ditch the magazine and sprocket. It makes it too complex. Optimizing the speed of the loader mechanism with a counting unit would be much better. The more steps, the more complexity and the more can go wrong.
3:40 HOLY SHIT, i never thought about this but its actually genius! Thank you very much i really learned alot today
Love your projects! Super neat and professional looking. Greetings from Argentina
just add a shallow taper to the entrance hole to make the entrance a bit wider than the connecting exit
You don't need perfectly matching output and input channels. Outwardly flaring the walls of the incoming channels and using the channel itself as a locating feature will solve the problem.
If you ever want to save a buck on CNC parts like your acrylic cover or aluminum and wood parts, feel free to hit me up. I'd love to support projects like these!
Great video! I didn't understand how you solved the problem with the uneven 3D-print surface that the nuts run along inside the feeder and magazine. Is its inside surface also prone to nut jamming in addition to the joint between the parts?
What kind of filaments are you using in your builds(maker/type), thank you.
Very specific question, but what kind of aluminium profile are you using on the side of the magazine?
Lol just use a scale, that’s what real companies do. Weigh 1 then weigh the rest, the scale gives you the total, quick simple and very precise.
Please talk about the feeder
👏📐🛠 It's amazing to see the thought and build process behind projects like this, even if we might not personally need to make something similar. The series provides a valuable opportunity to learn and appreciate the craftsmanship and innovation involved. The Quick-Lock & Sprocket 2.0 with 3D printed automation sounds intriguing! I'm curious to see how it works and the possibilities it opens up. Keep up the fantastic work and continue inspiring us with your creations! 👍🔧🏗
Congratulations, you've discovered climbing hex nuts :)
Again, simply stunning. What make/type is that grey filament you are using, it looks a really nice finish.???.
Adding a small angle to the top of the magazine should solve any issues with the nuts getting stuck. This doesn't even have to be something you design into the print, simply sanding the edges down a small amount would be enough to fix the jams and should provide the angle to allow the nuts to self right back to the desired orientation if that is required.
Do you have a feedback loop for dispensing? Inductive sensor or a weight cell?
Hello. I wanted to say that you have a really good mind for engineering and i would really like if you made tutorials on how you use the CAD. like maybe even just recordings of yourself doing it, not even having to explain it. i think i could learn a lot from it as i am about to enter college in the next two years
Would adding a slight chamfer to the problem edges of the nut feeder help? That way if the nuts are misaligned they'll wan to roll back into position
What course would his videos fall under? Product design? Industrial product design?
Any update on when/if you will release or sell the models for for this screw counting machine? I am very interested in this product.
I’ve been searching for a video like this for so long! One of my future goals is to have a UA-cam channel making things. I tried it once, and after doing a project, setting up the camera to capture the process was so time consuming. I thought there had to be a better way. I’ve been searching for this for a long time.
Incredible work! I feel really inspired!
20 years ago this kind of system could only be developed by a team of engineers and would be marketed to industry for tens of thousands of dollars per module.
You should add a stopper to the latch, that prevents screws from falling through, when there is no magazine attached.
If the footprint is important, is there any particular reason why you don't put the motor of bolt dispenser on the side to have even less footprint for the combination of nut dispenser and bolt dispenser? I mean in this case you can place the bolt dispenser motor directly below the nut dispenser motor, so they will share the same space horizontally
Does your channels need to be that tight? I might suggest making the channel on the lower part of the assembly a little larger to give you more tolerance to prevent edges and avoid jams.
Would tapering and appropriately filleting the infeed to the magazine not solve the catching issue?
Awesome video! I'm interested in what you have done previously - how did you gain the experience and knowledge that you show in this design process?
bro you are insane. make an automatic build plate changer for the bambu x1c please so i can copy it LOL
As good as the design is for this assembly, why not use the stepper motor that drives the magnetic feeder plate in each basket to count parts? Doing this would also eliminate the forced turning of the nuts issue because you could make the width of the channel wide enough so the nuts can't get jammed up.
You going to sell these? Damn! soo good.
Print the part 90 degrees so the ridges of the printing is in-line with the path of the nuts.
Interesting to consider one of the only parts in this assembly that is non-functional and has loose tolerances, to be a poor candidate for 3D printing
Hi what kind of software do you use for CAD design? Cheers from Amsterdam
7:55 Looking at the striped patterns gave me a fun and unexpected optical illusion.
Dude just use countersunk screw heads. Why the elaborate mechanism?
Why not weigh 10 screws therefore 1000 weigh 100 times more, no moving parts.
👍🏻👨🔧📚 Even though I may not have a direct use for the project, I'm absolutely hooked on this series! There's so much to learn and appreciate from the thought and build process. It's fascinating to see the Quick-Lock & Sprocket 2.0 come to life through 3D printing and automation. Keep up the amazing work, and I can't wait to see what else you create! 🙌🔥😊
Amazing series! Also, thanks for not including background music. Maybe not everyone's favorite decision, but I appreciate it 👍
Why can’t the channel for the nut be widened to the widest dimension of the nut? That way the other nuts in the train do not force a rotation.