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Comments (35)

• Animats
  That's very nice. The nut dispenser is very effective. Small, and feeds well. The screw dispenser is starting to run into jamming problems. It will probably start to jam more as the acrylic gets scratched and friction becomes worse. But it's manual and low volume, so jamming isn't a big issue.He's discovered that dispensing is easy, but order from chaos is harder.There's a whole theory of feeder design.[1] There are clever tricks to orient strangely shaped parts using feeders made from passive components. A basic trick is to get parts aligned in one axis, then arrange it so that the ones that are backwards or upside down hit some obstacle or are not supported, so they fall back down for another try.[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlyuHIxSC-A
• schobi
  A beautiful balance of effort and benefit.I don't know any better, but the screw counting mechanism seems awkward. Imagine the set has 10 components..I'm surprised there is no standard solution to this - like a tape and reel solution? A counting and dispensing gun that works for different sizes? But how much more would anyone pay for M3 bolts on a tape?Helmke had a tube feeding his dispensers in one of the videos, with bolts lengthwise. That tube idea could be used for a manual dispenser - imagine a drink dispenser, but giving 3 bolts. Maybe easier to store away, but just as awkward to load.
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  irjustin
  At scale, use weight and supply 1 or 2 extra.This is how pretty much every IKEA, LEGO, etc works with very small, cheap parts.End users benefit because it's easy to drop/lose/break one.
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  bschwindHN
  > You can probably guess my opinions on it though, the software is very good but the cloud-based vendor lock-in is grating, and the free tier is hobbled beyond the point of usefulness. On the plus side, being browser-based, it works perfectly on Linux.> The 1.1 release of FreeCAD should be soon. I really want FreeCAD to succeed, but blimey they have a big hill to climb. My fingers are crossed.Since these parts mostly seem to be laser cut acrylic (so mostly 2D), it seems like solvespace would do a good job at cranking out the designs. I haven't used it for a larger project like this though, maybe it was already considered.
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  LiamPowell
  > the (OnShape) free tier is hobbled beyond the point of usefulness.The free tier is identical to the standard tier except you can not create private documents and it has a no commercial use clause. This has been the case for many years, so I'm not sure where "hobbled beyond the point of usefulness" is coming from.
• kennywinker
  I love this so much. Such simple machines, for human-scale problems. I often get pulled down rabbit holes of machines and automation - this is a nice reminder that you can solve a lot of problems without reaching for an arduino or a servo.
• precompute
  Wow, that's so cool!
• chinathrow
  Oh come on, now I want that clock.https://mitxela.com/shop/clock4
• earleybird
  In a similar vein: https://www.youtube.com/@christopherhelmke
• blorenz
  Awesome solve!!! Lasers and 3d printing is my side hobby business and is what keeps my sanity intact. I love seeing the practical creations that are realized by them! One of my core tenets is being self-sufficient and achieving efficiencies. This post is exactly that. Well done.
• sudo_cowsay
  a small scale problem = assisting devicea medium scale problem = a better assisting devicea large scale problem = hire people
• nehal3m
  Push button, nut.
• abstractspoon
  Insane!
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  chrsstrm
  >> I have wasted a significant chunk of my life counting out small numbers of parts into bags and posting them to people. So, small parts like this are always counted by weight, and I'm wondering why you would spend so much time on a counting solution when "buy a scale" is right there.