Comment by tuna-piano

9 years ago

I'm begging you, please post a full-speed video that shows a seemingly random assortment of pieces sorted into boxes with identical color/size/shape pieces. I think it would be insanely satisfying for many people to watch. I would literally grab popcorn and watch it for hours (and I think many others would too).

Given your current setup, it might be easiest to just take one bin of identical pieces and then sort it by color into various bins. I'm salivating over what this would look like.

If you posted that video, I bet it would rack up millions of YouTube views.

24 comments

tuna-piano

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jacquesm  9 years ago

Ok, will do but first I have to speed up that first feeder stage because I really don't want to stand there for an hour to drop pieces on the recognition belt.

Any good ideas for that first stage are very welcome. I've looked at all kinds of mechanism (belts, pickers, vibrating drums) and none so far have the required speed, regularity and are quiet enough to be used in a home.

  • zer00eyz  9 years ago

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqAsOxUrXIw at about the 54 second mark you can see how this system does size sorting of trash (legos are not trash)

    A combination of pins and holes will get you roughly sized items.

    A vibrating table with lots of W snapped channels underneath is going to help too.

    A belt with "scoops" is a great way to feed out of your initial hopper, if you drop it onto a perpendicular belt (one with W grooves) your going to get a good initial separation more naturally.

    Air knives and puffers are your friend as well. Since you already have a detection system running it twice might be of benefit to you, just puff off anything that you can't sort as a single item.

    I don't think "quite" and "lego" really go together so no happy solution for you there other than sound isolation.

  • eigenvalue  9 years ago

    What about a big subwoofer for a car, and you can try driving it with random sound waves until you find one that works. Or go through a set of tones that can hit the resonant frequencies of various pieces?

  • londons_explore  9 years ago

    Proposed feeder design:

    Massive hopper (non-tapered if the tapering causes jams), feeding into slowly rotating (60 rpm) spiral-inner drum, falling onto very fast moving (10 feet per second) belt.

    Parts get spread into a ~2 inch thick layer inside the drum, and then falling (at least a foot) onto the fast moving belt will then likely separate them further. For parts that end up entangled, end up on the belt too close together, or are unrecognisable in the orientation they fall, simply redirect them back into the top of the hopper to be resorted.

    Even a 50% successful sort rate should be good enough.

  • falcolas  9 years ago

    Hmm. Tough problem. What about a couple of "tables" which vibrate back and forth at a really shallow angle, just enough to move pieces in one direction? I have gravel sorting tables with screens in mind, but the same principle with a solid table to just break down a heap into a flat layer may just work.

    I think that a couple of tables, cones, and dividers (to create lanes of pieces) could do a reasonable job of turning a heap of pieces into a steady stream of individual pieces.

  • Poiesis  9 years ago

    Palm sanders are frequently used to vibrate stuff like concrete forms (There are also specialized tools).