pkrush
commented
8 years ago Again what am I trying to achieve? Still only worry about 3 bins for now. How good can the feeding and spacing get? How well do the laser cut conveyors with direct drive motors work? (Really good so far!) The 3 ways solenoid works, but I am going for a two way to simplify the design. I need to build a working proof of concept for the solenoid. How well does the camera under the belt mount? I am not trying to use it. Find out if I need a slide accumulator. (This could be configured on the fly as slow belt.) Is there a difference between an input conveyor and a spacing conveyors? How does everything get mounted together?
This is a hardware test with Arduino software only. No Cameras, just IR & photo sensors This setup is the proof of concept for the prototype coin sorter hardware. This system should mostly run on its own. See issues for the details of this system.
Semi-auto DIY Hopper area: An area/open container that the coins can be poured into. It should hold 1-3 liters of pennies. Maybe at some point above can be a 5 gallon buck with a 3” hole in it that coins would flow out of. The input belt would pull the coins from out of this.
Off the self vs DIY hopper vs hand feeding: This is very low cost replacement for hand feeding the belt and not meant to be an unattended high volume system. Still I think this can be tweaked to feed a huge number of coins an hour, say 10000 plus. This is 60 plus pounds an hour; A level that requires occasional handcart usage!
Input conveyor belt: A conveyor on an angle to allow the doubled coins to slide off Only 19.2mm wide to stop larger coins from traveling up the conveyor. Not a multi coin sorter. Larger coins can just be picked off by hand.
Coin Blocker: Physically only allow cents to go through and stop stacked coins. Depending on how the coins are stacked this is going to jam. Also non-pennies, bent, gunked, glued, gummed, etc coins will get stuck. Sense current to know when the belt jams To clear: Run in reverse Vibrate by running in both directions I am think this is enough. It’s going to jam every so often and this is OK, it a low cost semi-auto system. The user can just clear it. If it’s a huge issue maybe use solenoid to remove coins from belt.
Slide Accumulator: A slide to buffer the varying output from the input feed. I think the material is an open question. Delran? Acrylic? Waxed wood? Sheet metal? Even a stock hopper would be benefit from an accumulator. Put an IR sensor near the top of the slide. If it’s blocked slow or stop the feel belt.
Why an Accumulator? This system has higher throughput when the coins are more uniformly spaced. For a given camera & lighting setup there is a max speed of the imaging conveyor before the images get blurry. The camera images the coins better with a slower belt. A lower cost camera can be used with lower belt speeds.
Imaging Conveyor: Sides only 19.1mm wide to make imaging easer. Clear belt just to start using it. It will be needed later.
3 way solenoid sorter: Uses cue ball English and a push solenoid to pop coins into one of three PVC pipes. Sequentially sorts all the pennies so none should fall off the end of the belt. Put in IR sensors to test if the system is sorting correctly.
Frame for Coin Sorting Hardware Proof of Concept A standalone frame to hold all the parts of the system. With PVC pipes that ½ dollars can go into. Size & spec?