Comment by jacquesm
9 years ago
Space wise this is hard, also parts tend to fall in clusters so the second belt now has to be much faster than the first one to make sure there is enough separation. I do have a second belt that I have not used yet so if there is no better idea then that is what I'll end up doing.
So just to make sure I got this right, you need a way to get a single piece of any size out of a container full of random pieces, and onto the first moving belt, at a rate higher than 1 piece per second?
I'm not familiar with the project but this seems like an interesting challenge.
Yes, that's roughly the gist of it. This is a hard problem because Lego comes in many shapes and sizes, a pre-sieving step limits the pieces that hit the belt at 42 mm largest cross section. So anything below that (but possibly much longer than that, all the way up to 2x1x16) can be found in the hopper.
There are some really good suggestions in this thread, the one that stands out for me most is the brush edged screw feeder, I think that one has most properties just right to work.