At 3400 without the farmer, it costs 4100 for a fully operational 1liter filler. At 60% of the price, are we seeing a reduction in quality?
Nope. It’s literally an electric cart farmer. Call your wooks and tell them that crybaby bonus is canceled, that sore wrist leverage is over
We are also adding functionality for a second nozzle. With 2 nozzles, this machine will be twice as fast as a basic farmer, which means faster than every other device on the market. (Yes, even faster than that $250k assembly line paperweight you bought. )
The 2nozzle variant will probably be around 5-5500 to fully build out. Thats still less than the KISS, jet fueler, or thompson duke at TWICE the speed.
once you factor in labor and overhead, that sounds about right
~20-50 for the stepper
~50-100 for controls/hardware(rpi/arduino + stepper controller, psu etc)
~100 for the small laser/plasma cut brackets(assuming a small batch/American producer)
I’m not an expert on T-slot cost, but I’d say they’re under 150 for the lot on that
maybe another hundred bucks for fasteners and lead screws and other little bits
I don’t see any patents, I’d be interested in working on an open source variety for sure
Thats pretty low. A raspberry pi, which would still require an Arduino for the stepper would be 50. What about all the other electrical costs like wires and connectors?
Im pretty sure this is a lil off too. There are 2 mounting brackets for just the syringe mount. Then you got the piston mount.
Just make sure it uses a cart farmer!!! Im pretty sure the nerdy birds will appreciate the open farmer!!!
you can get a NEMA 23 as low as ~$25 bucks, I think the lower precision of a china stepper will be fine given the application
an rpi zero is 5 bucks, arduino is about the same. The stepper controller ranges from ~20 to 75 or so for nema 23 and similar sizes. Power supplies are ~40ish give or take a bit for mean well or comparable
Those mounts aren’t terribly complicated, just laser cut steel or aluminum. I could make some 3d printed one offs with SLS nylon from a print farm and probably be around that price mark. T-slot is ~$7/foot for the single size, $24/foot for the triple. I am probably underestimating the lead screw cost, but adapting something from 3d printer parts should be doable and keep prices reasonable
If there’s demand for it, I’m open to trying it. I’ve been looking for a new project to sink my teeth into, this one has a decent learning curve to it as far as modeling the assembly
looks like the one linked is running a linear slide for the Z axis movement and the secondary stepper is controlling the plunger action on the syringe.
the question is how automated would you want it? I think really being that its intended to be semi automated the only real thing necessary is the plunger control; a wook can just manipulate the cart tray; so plunging the Z axis down(the linear slide and the entire syringe assembly) is not 100% required.
really would be easy af; GUI of the HMI is always annoying to do tho. One would just need to calculate the steppers steps per ML of solution dispensed. perhaps macroing a plunger “reverse” after each pump would minimize dripping and oozing between carts when the wook is repositioning. have a foot pedal trigger aswell
I was thinking foot pedal, or a small momentary on switch that the cart buts up to on the filling nozzle. You just need to write a little G-code and come up with a way to loop it to step the same number of steps each time once you dial in the fill
Looks like the Rocky Mountain unit is using a, C-Beam Linear Actuator, with the syringe mounted to the bottom of it, and then that whole setup is mounted on a larger manually actuated linear c beam, to control the height of the syringe mount bundle.
