Rapid Feeder - A new type of feeder

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How many people here would be interested in getting these feeders in classic green color and what is a price point that works for you so I can calculate the volume required to meet that price point? Please also let me know quantity you would be interested in. My hope is to get enough people interested so we can lower the price point with a group buy. Note that these have only been mechanically tested, but the code is ready and compiles.

In continuation of my last post here on I2C feeder design , which allows the flexibility to move feeders along an axis without the need for mechanically indexing them, here is a picture of my first working prototype without a sprocket. I hooked it up to a breadboard setup to test. My next plan is to get CNC'd PCBs. These PCBs are expensive at low volume and my hope is that others here may also be interested in this to help out in developing it. In doing so, I am wondering how many would like to join in on the first round of prototypes? I have most of the pieces already, just need to buy more motors to match the volume of PCBs and 3D print the cover of each feeder from PLA (which is a non critical part for dimensional accuracy). The sprocket will also be made out of 1mm thick PCB. This would include the motherboard to plug the feeders into as well. All the feeders will be SMT assembled, but ship mechanically un-assembled (to save space in shipping box). The feeder is designed to work with all tape types shown on this guide: http://www.vishay.com/docs//tapereel.pdf  This includes proper min bend radius of wider tapes. This first batch will only be for 8mm wide tapes, but the feeder is designed to be expandable to wider tapes by swapping the standoffs and dowels to longer ones. The entire setup runs on Arduino code and uses two optical sensors. What still needs to be figured out is the mounting of the feeders to the motherboard. Currently there are two holes on top and under the 5 pin spring connector as you can see, but these don't work well. The idea was to have it clip onto two rods, but PCBs don't flex well enough to make it work. Any suggestions appreciated.

I've made an SMT feeder motherboard using 3 Mux (CD74HC151M96) and 2 LED drivers (PCAB) and 24 DC Motor (DRV) drivers, all running on ATMEGA328PB. See attached schematic.

If you are looking for more details, kindly visit KF-SMT.

I am trying to code something so I can send M600 N F
N = Number of Feeder: 0&#;NUMBER_OF_FEEDER
F = Feedlength, has to be a multiple of 2 mm, 24mm maximum, which in return moves until X encoder counts (defined in config).

The LED drivers control the motors that move the tape sprockets and the MUXs control which feeder the Atmega chip will read the encoder pulses from. I'd also like to potentially have a curved start/stop so the start/stop is not abrupt. Should be fast, but not abrupt so components don't go flying off the tape. The PCA gives you fine-grained control over the rising and falling edges of the PWM pulses for each channel

Here is the pinout matrix: Feeder Matrix - Public - Google Sheets

Anyone up for collaborating on this? I will provide 10 free SMT feeders in return with a motherboard so you can build or use on your own SMT machine.

Or, if you'd like to provide a quote, PM me.

https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=.0;attach=

If you want to learn more, please visit our website Smt Feeder.