The sprocket - 3D printed automatic screw packaging  

This channel is reminiscent of Stuff Made Here, seemingly appearing overnight with really impressive content. I predict it will experience similarly rapid growth once the videos start reaching their target audience. Great job, I will be following closely!

I've been following a handful more robotics and automation design channels over the past few years, but this is different. This is explaining concepts and ideas I could only get in my Mechatronics engineering courses at uni. I hope to see a lot more videos from you, and I know I'll make use of some of these concepts in my career designing and implementing automation processes.

Only 178 subscribers?? Wtf??? You are a genius!

if you put a worm gear you get breaking when trying to back drive it, so you don’t need to worry about the holding torque of the stepper or it unloading when powered down. you also might be able to make it more compact and mount the stepper 90°.

Key takeaways: * Pressing a timing belt pulley onto 3d printed parts is a great way to transmit torque. Thanks! * Standoff and through bolts is a great way to assemble parts that interface with other assemblies. No need for precision, it self adjusts as it clamps. In order to simplify programming you could add an optical or mechanical sensor on the individual tines of your counting sprocket. That way the stepper angle and gear ratio get factored out and don't have to be considered. No encoder, no calibration, all you need is a number of "pulses" to count. Very clean presentation, thanks for spending your time putting this together, I look forward to your future videos!

3d printing is such a great hobby - so many ideas and not enough time!

When the module fitted into the crate ... ♥

This is excellent! Glad to see the 20T pulley hub idea is spreading into other applications.

Instant happiness when the screws are so precisely dispent🎉❤ my autism craves just that!😅 Got my sub 💪

Thanks for the specific shout-out; wasn't expecting that. XD If this prototype is anything to go by, the sprocket method works even better than I thought it would! I agree with avoiding a Geneva drive. Even before tolerance and speed concerns, I worry that a 3D printed version of that mechanism would have a pretty short service life.

This is awesome! This feels like the same type of channel that the founder of Opulo started before his company went public. Really cool mid-scale manufacturing type of machines!

Please keep making videos!!! This is great. I'm so glad I found this channel. Thank you!

Smart, using toothed pulleys as spline adapters. I shall steal this idea :)

Excellent video, looking forward to the next one!

This is seriously impressive. A lot of "out of the box" thinking which is very hard

This is exactly the kind of diy industrial engineering I enjoy. Keep it up!

Man, respect to you from Russia, Chelyabinsk. There are few of us on the planet) Sawed-off engineers (I can see it in your eyes) If you suddenly become sad and lonely, know that somewhere in the heart of Morder is an oasis of adequacy and you will always be welcomed with love) Really good for you, just know it.

einfach cool wie du das umsetzt. Sobald ich mal ein paar schrauben verpacken oder sortieren muss kaufe ich deine Produkte !! Super stark bitte weiterhin so geilen Content

You are genius. Nice job dude ❤

Your skill level and attention to details will take you far. Thanks for sharing.

Came here from HackaDay, and subbed. Really great engineering, and to the point without ego-massaging intro or lots of hemming and hawing. This seems to be a niche space at first glance, however in reality its the underpinning for almost all future manufacturing processes going forward.

Best Drawingboard ever.

Nice to see that at least someone is still working successfully on Wintergatan Marble Machine X.

CAN bus is likely what you want to use if each module will have its own MCU. However, you could just as easily use stepper motor drivers with a I2C interfaces and just use one MCU

Fascinating concept and content. Amazing what can be accomplished and your explanations are excellent. Excited to see what comes next.... brilliant!!

Im watching all your videos in one go, just discovered the channel, I wondered why you aren't using something continuously spinning in the last vid, and now this one starts with it, amazing.

Really impressive stuff, great work man!

if you're concerned about dumping the magazine if the stepper loses power, do a ratchet system with the pawl on a continuous duty solenoid that is actively being held open so if power is lost it automatically snaps forward and locks the dispenser, dropping hopefully only one or zero screws if it's fast enough. or you can have a separately powered circuit that the detects a failure on the main system and snaps the solenoid out, there's a couple ways to achieve that sort of thing. another way is also a worm drive, but that's not conducive to 3D printing due to the high contact and wear plus it'll greatly reduce the max dispensing speed, but it is 100% mechanical and you can find fairly cheap small brass gear sets online.

Looks smooth, I like it

Awesome!

This is some really amazing work, well thought out and very professional!

I like your way of bringing your design decisions and the respective thought process across a lot! Especially if you hint at a cool feature or point out how much you like a part - I feel that...

A timing belt pulley as an insert for a plastic part is very clever indeed.

Excellent content, great design and really good and crystal clear explanation. Thank you!

Fascinating. Thanks for this :)

Super cool project, and really well explained. Also great use of 3D printing! Keep it up :)

Amazing video. Can not wait for the next video

Wirklich sehr gut, und Ihr Englisch ist perfekt!

After I watched the first video my first thought was that a servo driven wheel would be more appropriate :)

This is genuinely so impressive, really brilliant system idea 👌🏻

Pretty clever Chris. Keep working for yourself if you can, you'll pollute your love for this work by subjugating yourself. I speak from personal experience.

very cool concept and execution!

Jeez i love the use of those shoulder screws for fitment! :)

Wow, I’ve never subbed so fast to a channel. Seriously, this is awesome. Keep it up man!

Great work!

Impresive ! Great material very good video

Love your engineering! I had a similar problem once: portioning plastic granules. I had a leadscrew prototype and thought about doing it by weight. But in the end everything was too complex and I wanted an easy ans fast solution. I just did it by volume. I measured four cylinders from drainage pipe to the approximate size, attached them under a board with holes the diameter of the pipe. They were closed by flaps on the bottom. To these flaps I added dead volume to fine tune the amount but left enough slack/over-volume for inconsistencies due to compacting variability etc. We would slide a bag over each tube, close the flap, dump in the product, take a ruler to wipe off excess granules (think sintering 3d printers). Then open each flap take out the bag filled with a good approximation of the target weight.

Modulsystem out of Euroboxes. Very clever. Nice work with the gear and the stepper. 👍🏻

Excellent stuff. I would also brace that stepper with a bracket from the rear. Having a moving mass (servo) on an arm can cause trouble down the line with play in the gears and fatigue of that arm.

Gem Channel! Please keep on producing videos!

Interesting build and design. Looking forward to seeing more and what you will actually use it for

Maybe mounting an optical gate below the dispenser to count the number of dispensed screws. Basically, a tight feedback loop to cross-check reliability.

Another way to reduce the load on the motor from the falling screws would be to add a small offset in the path of the screws, a bit like a sloped cartoonish lightning bolt.

This is awesome!!

Great stuff!👍👍

this is amazing and is worthy of a sub can't wait to see your future vids 👍👍

Very enjoyable to watch. Would love to see more about the sorting and orienting of the screws and nuts.

This is very reminiscent of stuff made here crossed over with wintergatan and then a little bit of tom Stanton, perfect combo

Wow. Great work. I see you become big in the 3D printing community. Keep it up mate!

BRO I LOVE THIS

I love your approach to this! A beautiful mix of uniqueness, wintegartan(current version) and stuff made here

in this prototype your trusting that the magazine will be always full i suggest you add a TCRT5000 Infrared Reflective Sensor or something similar to count the screws !! you cant really be sure that the sprocket mechanism really grabbed a screw , maybe the motor skipped or the magazine is empty for some reason !! it should be mounted as close to the sprocket as possible , it will also act as a magazine empty signal i think that will be cool

Very cool! Thank you!!

if you wanted to use the weight of the screws, you could replace the stepper motor and gear assembly with a brake disk connected to an encoder. PID control could slow and stop the disk and so the sprocket pretty accurately either with force from a servo motor or a 'variable voltage'/pwm driven solenoid to pinch the disk. A separate solenoid could rest with a pin through a hole in the brake disk, and turn on to pull the disk out, so its 'off state' holds the system still. It might be overly complicated for the task but could work. As someone else said, it could be good (in any system), to have a light gate or optical sensor to validate the number of screws. Also really cool video! Just found your channel.

Love the project, and sharing your progression of ideas! Yet another armchair designer here… I see there are two mechanical problems to solve: a mechanism to stop the screws from falling out, and another to overcome that mechanism for one piece. Solution could be as simple as a leaf spring to stop the flow of parts and then an actuator (say, a wedge on a solenoid, or a flap on a motor) to push one piece past that passive barrier. Something more complex like a toothed gear seems prone to getting jammed because it depends on the precise spacing of multiple parts when really you only need to engage the one part being fed. Consider that even a one-piece actuator will need its position adjusted to accommodate different parts.

Nice work!

First time watching, very impressed by your engineering and your video creating skills!

Great analysis and project.. very well performed... Now i just need a project of counting screws...

"Thanks Voron" got me! 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Glad I stumbled across your channel. Very intresting project and from an engineering perspective a project which has lots of potential. i look forward seeing more of your brilliant ideas.

I subbed because I think you know what you are doing, excellent work my friend.

A worm on the stepper will also not allow the parts dispenser gear to run in reverse because all of the force would be axial on the stepper. Very nice work.

New subscriber here, I work in automation and manufacturing and believe your onto a great thing here, keep up the brilliant work.

Good stuff!

Bravo. I don't need one. But somehow I want one:-)

Just found your channel and binged all three videos. Loving what you have so far. These screw packaging videos feel like I have joined you in the middle of a project and missing the larger context. Are you planning on a video explaining the idea for the complete system? Or maybe just a short description at the beginning of the next video?

Amazing content 🤯

wow, really impressive mechanisms. This is similar to what I do at work so I'm subscribed to get ideas. Thanks!

One problem I faced with stepper motors and printed parts is the heat of the motor. Steppers can easily exceed the glassing point of plastic, softening the gear and the holder.

As a part counting goes, nothing beats camera and computer vision. It is fast and modular. Counting the parts one by one will take an eternity.

1) you can use a line of sight sensor between the sprocket teeth to count the no of screws dispensed 2) or you can calculate what degree of rotation does one sprocket rotation needs from the DC motor and just multiply it with the number of screws you wanna get (You also need a digital pad or a screen to input the number of screws you need) You can also add an automatic packaging mechanism at the end and add a feature to make n packets of m screws and bolts

If you have multiple dispensers that do not need operate simultaneously, you could make a single stepper motor run all of them via a switching transmission.

The square teeth on the sprocket are going to wear early, specifically the last edge holding back the screw (and specifically screws with their sharp threads), but this is actually good and I think you should do it on purpose in the design. If you round over the trailing edge of the sprocket then the point in rotation where the screw is released will happen earlier, decreasing the latency between command and delivery, letting you move the rest position of the next screws back to potentially put them in a stronger position to bear the force of stopping the stack after dispensing, or a combination of these. It will also reduce filament use a marginal amount and eliminate almost all of the shift in latency you'd expect over the lifetime of the square tip as it rounds over. An alternate way to think about this is the two form a rack and pinion, with the screws being the rack and the pinion being the pinion. The ideal shape of the trailing edge is the involute shape for a pinion, not perfectly circular but with the point of contact lying on an approximate line (of engagement) rather than the circle of the pinion.

Another way to do it would be to install a thing that weight the screws in real time and trigger the solenoid to stop them from falling when the weight is enough.

Amazing content, i subscribed!

just one thing to add to your future plans, make sure the rotation sensor is absolute, or has some way of homing, or restating the system could ba a real pain

I have a couple suggestions. First, include an optical sensor for detecting the rotation of the final gear. This could be tied into calibration logic to detect the rotation ratio between the stepper and the output without hardcoding (more modular). Second, install the middle gear in a spring-loaded sliding carriage with the spring pushing the B gear into both the A and C gears. This will allow for the gear to pop out of place should a jamb occur (sensing this condition would then rely on the first suggestion). Third, offset the gear contact planes, so that the B and C gears can be readily swapped for different gearing ratios. (The 2nd suggestion will aid in this process, particularly if the rotational axis is positioned above that of both the A and C gears.) Fourth, secure the stepper to the mounting frame from both the back and front in at least two opposite holes on each side. This will minimize rotational movement of the stepper body in all three axis. Fifth, include an optical sensor under the output to detect when no screw/part has been dispensed despite dispense gear rotation.

wow, great video! just subscribed and hope to see much more from you!

Nice video, thanks :)

combine both approaches, create a gear with magnets embedded in each tooth, a sensor to recognize and count rotations via the passing magnets, and a solenoid to bind the gear.

Before you make 40 of them, I recommend using an optical sensor you see on 3D printers to count the teeth on the sprocket so you can always verify the dispensed amount of screws, while being able to compensate for any index drift that might accumulate over time. Stepper motors are very reliable, but not perfect, so solely relying on sending an X amount of steps every time without feedback from an external sensor or encoder is unwise. Benefit is that this will probably make your system 10x more reliable while it only costs about 3 dollars to add to the system.

You are a great man

I like this method better than the solenoid one, seems to be a better way of doing this. You asked for suggestions, the only one I can think of is possibly using a DC motor, and a light sensor after the the sprocket 🤔 you could turn the sprocket on until a specific number of triggers of the light sensor has been completed, and then turn off the sprocket.

If you go with TMC stepper drivers you could use stallguard for detecting the load on the stepper. It's also being used on 3D-printers for sensorless endstops / homing.

You can use a esp32 that uses WIFI to control a stepper TMC2208/ or DRV8825 to control the stepper motor, really simple and cheap (a pair of $ if you get the wroom) and you need low complexity to wire it. Then controll each esp32 by a raspbery pi or anycomputer with wifi by sending json to them with how many bolts you want (this is cool because you can have a response after the filling too). All boxes will have the same code and same schematics, so no complexity, just a different ID for each esp32. This also can be made by wire by controlling them with the i2c protocol or others but having wifi makes them much more modularity. Cheers! And if you want accuraccy, i suggest adding a light sensor to count the bolts as they fall if you want a second measure security, so you can count the bolts with this system and dont worry about the gear not having bolts in the buffer or the stepper lossing steps. Cheers! also a weight calculator in a hopper with all the bolts as final check will be great, a tensor sensor measure them in miligrams, very precise. And final tip, if you are scared for the stepper motor to fail during offpower, there are some motors with autobreaking feature with no power, and also there are other simple ways like blocking the gears with the actuator or a servo during offline and probably your first approach so you can run this with batteries instead of maingrid. And because I edited this message several times, I can give you my last solution to the problem, instead of having a machine box for each type of bolt, will be better to have just 1 machine with several buffers in pararell (and focus on making the magazine with bigger capacity, for example by zigzagin the bolts inside side to side) and feed the different bolts to the machine manually as the magazines gets lower or with a robotic arm that can grab them from the cartonbox reading a qr code for example. So you can save space and just build 1 machine and relay on the magazines instead of boxes like a pick and place machine.

Klasse Film. Ich lass gleich mal ein Abo da und freue mich auf das was noch kommt.

Christopher: I want to dispense as fast as possible My brain: Sooooo…Railgun?

very interesting videos!

You could use an optical sensor around the sprocket teeth to sense if it is turning the correct amount

Awesome :)