Dear MPCNC-Community,
I reach out to you guys as we are looking to automate certain aspects of our production line. That is we are a producer of plastic candle cups in various sizes for our local clients here in Poland.
We currently place these cups by hand, and since these are produced and sold in the millions you can image the strain it puts on our workers.
Several attempts to automate with industry standard equipment failed to to cost concerns. Also, we are quite far away from a support structure and service visits, changes in programs with proprietary service technicians are not an option for us.
Therefore I was searching for a solution based on open-source technology and based on something that is already there. And this is how I found the MPCNC.
I hope to take the MPCNC to a size of 1400x900mm (x&Y) and (350-500mm) in Z (so a standard Europalet 1200x800 fits under it).
The precision and repeatabilty is ok at ±1,5mm. So not more than what a human can resonably achieve over longer intervals and given the cycle time.
The travel speed required are between 50-100mm/s. Of course faster is better, but let’s stand from there.
The Gantry can be belt driven (as is the MPCNC) or screw driven.
The payload is virtually none. Each cup weights in at not more than 25gr of PP. If we take 16-20 pcs really just the matter of the gripper is what we carry around.
The gripper can be linear actuator where we print most of the contact surfaces (I will explain more if needed).
So what I really need is a machine that picks up a set of cups on one end of the table and puts them away on the other end until the array of cups is completed. Then it can wait (accustic signal) until the operator has cleared the area below and restarted the sequence with the push of a button.
The challenge in this project is to implement the gripper, the logic that decides whether a set of cups is ready to be picked up, the push button for program reset/repeat, the implementation of possible closed loop steppers.
Now I know that many of you have spent years to acquire the skillset to pull something like this of, and certainly you spent the other buck or two. Now this is a chance to earn some of that sweat 'n tears money back as I don’t expect you to do this for free. It’ll certainly make cool content for social media.
To be clear I am paying you for your expertise and knowledge not for the MPCNC parts, which we will print ourself or order from V1 as much as possible.
Please let me know how I can contact you. And as we are here in Poland, European helpers are preferred.