Semi-auto feeder for 8mm tapes -- open source/3D printable design

[PloopyCo]

Thought you guys might enjoy this. We're using an OpenPNP-powered Liteplacer in-house, and designed semi-auto feeders for it. They've been wonderfully reliable, so we open-sourced the design.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa37CS5gLkE

Source/wiki: https://github.com/ploopyco/pnp-feeder/wiki

[bert shivaan]

That is Stupendous!!!!!!

Thank you so much for this!!

For sure I will be getting that printer to get started printing.

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[Jason von Nieda]

Really excellent work, excellent documentation and even for sale!  Great job all around!

May I link to them from http://openpnp.org/hardware/?

Thanks,

Jason

--

[PloopyCo]

Please do! Is there also a place where setup instructions could go? The OpenPNP config to use these is pretty straightforward.

On Tuesday, 21 January 2020 13:25:43 UTC-5, Jason von Nieda wrote:

Really excellent work, excellent documentation and even for sale!  Great job all around!

May I link to them from http://openpnp.org/hardware/?

Thanks,

Jason

On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 11:12 AM PloopyCo <artmecha...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thought you guys might enjoy this. We're using an OpenPNP-powered Liteplacer in-house, and designed semi-auto feeders for it. They've been wonderfully reliable, so we open-sourced the design.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa37CS5gLkE

Source/wiki: https://github.com/ploopyco/pnp-feeder/wiki

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[TheCunningFellow]

How does the tape get pulled?

[PloopyCo]

There's a ratchet in the feeder. When you push the lever down, it advances the tape. The mechanism ensures that one push always gets you 4mm, so the pick location stays constant over thousands of actuations (a whole reel of 5k parts).

[Michael Anton]

Does this feeder just part the cover tape rather than removing it?  If so, you may want to be a bit careful using this, as it is likely covered by one or more patents.  This is one example https://patents.google.com/patent/US6402452B1/en that I could find quickly.

[PloopyCo]

There is indeed some patent coverage, but as you yourself discovered, this design was the Hot New Thing in the late 90s'. The beauty of this situation is that the design is described essentially fully by a bunch of expired patents, which is about as good as it gets in the open source hardware world. :D

[Dave McGuire]

"I had the shot, there was no danger" ...nicely done. ;)

-Dave

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Dave McGuire
McGuire Scientific Services, LLC
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[Michael Anton]

That particular patent hasn't expired yet, and won't until April 25th.  Feeder Finger is the company that I was thinking of that makes these for many different feeders.  I'm not sure if their patents are active currently, but they are more recent.

[Bill Ruckman]

The only patent I could find for Feeder Finger has a status of "Abandoned".  It was just a patent application that never got approved.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140318713A1/en

[Shai]

Was just going to comment on the patent also but I see others have beat me to it. This is the company: https://feederfinger.com

Otherwise, this is great work and super compact!

[Dave B.]

Thanks a lot for sharing these.  I bought 10 of them to support your efforts and look forward to printing more.

-Dave

On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 10:04 PM Shai <shai...@gmail.com> wrote:

Was just going to comment on the patent also but I see others have beat me to it. This is the company: https://feederfinger.com

Otherwise, this is great work and super compact!

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[Dave McGuire]

I placed an order as well. Looking forward to putting them through
their paces.

-Dave

On 1/21/20 10:17 PM, Dave B. wrote:
> Thanks a lot for sharing these.  I bought 10 of them to support your
> efforts and look forward to printing more.
> -Dave
>
> On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 10:04 PM Shai <shai...@gmail.com
> <mailto:shai...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Was just going to comment on the patent also but I see others have
> beat me to it. This is the company: https://feederfinger.com
>
> Otherwise, this is great work and super compact!
>
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[PloopyCo]

Saw that. :) Thanks! I'd love to hear feedback (both good and bad) when you get 'em.

On Tuesday, 21 January 2020 22:25:31 UTC-5, mcguirescientificservices wrote:

  I placed an order as well.  Looking forward to putting them through
their paces.

            -Dave

On 1/21/20 10:17 PM, Dave B. wrote:
> Thanks a lot for sharing these.  I bought 10 of them to support your
> efforts and look forward to printing more.
> -Dave
>
> On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 10:04 PM Shai <shai...@gmail.com
> <mailto:shai...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Was just going to comment on the patent also but I see others have
>     beat me to it. This is the company: https://feederfinger.com
>
>     Otherwise, this is great work and super compact!
>
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[TheCunningFellow]

AH - OK - I missed it was acting like the Finger-Feeder.

I tried to design one of them myself some time ago and could not get a geometry that would work across all the cover tapes I had here.  The worst problem I has was with cover tapes that where so loosely attached that both sides came off and the whole thing became a mess.

However now that a bug has been fixed that will let me use cut tapes more easily I could use those old tapes for special components in cut tape feeders and keep the auto feeders to just shiny new name brand tapes.

On Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 3:12:58 AM UTC+10, PloopyCo wrote:

[Alexander Goldstone]

@PloopyCo Are all 8mm tapes standard in terms of their pitch?... I assumed that different components had different spacing between them even if they have the same 8mm tape width?

[John Plocher]

8mm tapes are usually 4mm pitch, with small components (0201...) @ 2mm pitch.

  -John

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[Michael Anton]

0402 parts are also 2mm pitch.  AFAIK, anything 0402 and below are 2mm pitch.

On Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 5:38:32 PM UTC-7, John Plocher wrote:

8mm tapes are usually 4mm pitch, with small components (0201...) @ 2mm pitch.

  -John

On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 4:35 PM Alexander Goldstone <alexander...@gmail.com> wrote:

@PloopyCo Are all 8mm tapes standard in terms of their pitch?... I assumed that different components had different spacing between them even if they have the same 8mm tape width?

On Tuesday, January 21, 2020 at 5:12:58 PM UTC, PloopyCo wrote:

Thought you guys might enjoy this. We're using an OpenPNP-powered Liteplacer in-house, and designed semi-auto feeders for it. They've been wonderfully reliable, so we open-sourced the design.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa37CS5gLkE

Source/wiki: https://github.com/ploopyco/pnp-feeder/wiki

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[Alexander Goldstone]

Thanks both... my most common parts are 0402 and 0603 which explains why I thought they varied.

@ploopyco... Do you have any plans for variants that would work for other component and tape sizes?

[Max Alvarez Holliday]

+1 for an 0402 version!

@PloopyCo, mind sharing your machine.xml file or a snippet of the feeder definition for these?

Thanks for your contributions!

[TheCunningFellow]

Just printed one on my Prusa MK3 at 0.1mm

It was having same problem as the design when I tried to do to copy a "finger feeder".

That is some tapes that the cover tape was stuck too well would eventually not get lifted enough and start to partially cover the pocket.

Then other tapes with lightly stuck cover tapes would pull off completely and then bunch up make a mess and get in the way.

Maybe "finger feeders" are just more critical of the brand and freshness of the reels.

This is a shame as I have yet to come up with a tape-puller I am happy with and it would have been good to not have to peel the tapes.

On Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 3:12:58 AM UTC+10, PloopyCo wrote:

[Michael Anton]

As I recall, weren't the finger feeders for paper tape only?

[TheCunningFellow]

I have no idea if the commercial ones work with plastic tapes.

All I know is that the home made ones I made AND the design in this thread both have problems on various paper tapes I have.

Eight month old 1u0 0603 MLCC and the tape does not come off cleanly.

Four year old 0603 Rs and the cover comes off totally.

I know no one would be using 4 year old Rs in a commercial setting - but as a hobby guy I would like to use older components.

[Michael Anton]

I'd use 4 year old part in a commercial setting, if they don't cause any problems.  I have parts at least that old, and so far I haven't observed either of those effects, at least not yet.  But, my feeders are the more traditional type, where the tape is pulled off.

[ma...@makr.zone]

Hi Cunning Fellow

Thanks for that valuable insight.

Did you ever try 0402 with those? Did they at least work with fresh tape?

Why I ask: In the BlindsFeeder I noticed it is very hard not to have the parts jump out from these extremely shallow pockets. Sliding the cover over would roll them out of the pockets unless the cover was really flush and scraping them off itself. Guess they were attracted by the static (somewhat remedied with an anti-static coating). I assume the same would happen with any type of peeling feeder i.e. on the blade.

_Mark

[TheCunningFellow]

No - I have never tried 0402 with my PnP.  My PNP never ran that well I thought I could use 0402.  With some recent (to me) bug fixes to vision and smoothie as well as a new PC I just built - I am hoping I can build the PNP to be more accurate and reliable.

I personally avoid 0402 but the times I can't avoid it (RF things) I just hand place those last components.

In the morning - I'll get some 0402 R and see if they can go through this one I printed OK.

I'll also try some 0402 on the auto feeder design I am working on that has a shutter over the parts.

[Mike M.]

Hi

I think there should be a spring type of bed under finger in order to push up plastic thiner tape (than paper tape) in order that finger pilling aside cover tape would work on plastic tapes...

Mike

[Mike M.]

Video here - but all with paper tapes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOwMh80_mRM

[Mike M.]

All videos on their web show only paper tape: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX_a2sNtgXf3fL0GXOb1pWw

[Bill Ruckman]

I also experimented with a 3d printed feeder that peels back the cover.  I mostly use 0402 parts and static is a big problem.  I painted it with conductive paint, which helped a lot until the paint wore off.  I thought about printing with esd safe filament, but it is expensive.

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[Max Alvarez Holliday]

Just my 2 cents.. but having measured the surface charge on a handful of 3D printed PLA structures, they are surprisingly dissipative! It's likely the surface charge that's causing your 0402 woes is a result of the printed surfaces sliding across each other (triboelectric effect).

Could someone experiencing these issues try putting some thin copper tape across PLA surfaces that are in contact with each other and move during normal operation? Doesn't have to be anything crazy, just give it enough copper for nearby charges to want to escape.

[Jim]

On Friday, January 24, 2020 at 6:43:52 PM UTC+1, Bill Ruckman wrote:

I mostly use 0402 parts and static is a big problem.

On my feeders there is the cover made of copper - i think that prevents electrostatic problems.

[Michael Anton]

I've read recently that even passive components are susceptible to damage from ESD, so it would be wise to use some sort of coating if possible.  This is what I generally do for feeder parts that I print.  The nickel based coating from MG Chemicals seems to stand up fairly well to abrasion, but it is fairly expensive, so I mostly use the carbon based one now.  I've used a staticide as well to keep the charge down, but I wouldn't thing that that would last all that long, and would probably need to be recoated frequently.

I've tried a couple of different ESD filaments, but so far, I haven't found one that prints very well, or actually makes strong parts.  It seems like the carbon loading on these is often pretty high, so that makes them pretty brittle, and results in poor layer bonding as well.  I've heard that the ESD filament from https://www.3dxtech.com/esd-safe-filament/ is supposed to be better, but I haven't tried it yet, and it really is much more expensive than the filaments I've tried so far.

On Friday, January 24, 2020 at 10:43:52 AM UTC-7, Bill Ruckman wrote:

I also experimented with a 3d printed feeder that peels back the cover.  I mostly use 0402 parts and static is a big problem.  I painted it with conductive paint, which helped a lot until the paint wore off.  I thought about printing with esd safe filament, but it is expensive.

[Michael Anton]

The feeder fingers site seems to mention that many of their offerings are for paper tape only.  There is one listed for the Yamaha feeders, that is rated for paper, and heat sealed plastic tapes.  Some plastic tapes are not heat sealed, and are instead glued, so perhaps it doesn't work with those.

[Mike M.]

Hi- I just did a test with magnet on my Siplace feedrs - The are shutter and surounding parts are out of stainless steel (non-magnetic).

Seams Stainless steel is as well ESD.

Mike

[TheCunningFellow]

I tried 0402 both with this design and the one I am doing with a shutter.

The C went OK for about 50 parts.  The R all had some get pulled out of the pockets by static or whatever the problem is.

[Brynn Rogers]

I was watching Farmer Bob Combine the corn field this fall, and pointed out to him the length of chain dragging on the ground under his combine.   He replied that it is there to to dissapate Electrostatic buildup.

[Marius Liebenberg]

Do you have design files available for this feeder or should I ask if you are going to share them rather. I would like to see if one can make them for wider tapes and maybe deeper tapes as well

[Jon Raymond]

https://github.com/ploopyco/pnp-feeder

[Marius Liebenberg]

Those are rendered files not design files

On Wednesday, January 29, 2020 at 10:02:04 PM UTC+2, Jon Raymond wrote:

https://github.com/ploopyco/pnp-feeder

[Jon Raymond]

No.... 

Step files are 3d models that you can  import and edit with pretty much any CAD system out there. 

[Peter Betz]

This looks great, awesome work!

Do you find it is completely reliable with paper and plastic tapes? I assume so, since you sell them both? I am going to pick some up to support the cause. 

I see there is no fastener holes in the base plates, how do you intend these to be secured to the machine?

Peter.