we've got lots and lots of these uh baby food pouch caps
and previously i built a automatic catapult that shoots these things and i've also built
a rubber band crossbow that automatically aims and shoots. So the challenge to myself is to
make some kind of hopper feeder for these things that feeds them one at a time. And this was my
first experiment the wheel is supposed to pick up a cap out of the bunch every time it goes by
but the problem is if there isn't a cap that is in the right orientation
it doesn't grab one here it's got one but uh see it's uh picking up other ones ahead of it
the problem is this wheel is way too small so i made a bigger one to try it out again
so this doesn't always pick up because there might not be a cap in the right orientation on
the bottom and so to agitate that a little bit i glued this a little bit on there which will stir
them around and hopefully flip some of them around so there it's got one that's the right orientation
another one another one and this time i kind of missed it so this kind of worked i added a second
notch and the second agitator and made a stand to figure out what's the best angle to hold this at
so i think i need to change it a little bit more this way
and i also got to keep caps from falling at the bottom
more this way
hey
with the release much more near the top all these extra bits will just fall off
so this is working surprisingly well except for pieces getting kicked out
right here so i need more barrier oh and this one
i gotta test this running at a constant speed without hand turning it
Wrong gear!
i think my feeding contraption works adequately now i just need the catapulting part.
These three pieces are going to make up my rotary catapult.
With both pieces kind of working now i just need to figure out how to get the
caps from the feeder to the shooter and i was initially going to put both of those on the same
shaft but that involves a complicated chute to get the caps there so Ii figured instead to put
the shooter right where the caps come out of the feeder but that involves some gears to power it.
I'm just gluing these bits together with hot glue so i don't have to wait for the glue to dry
and i can't be bothered with CA glue and activator and all that stuff
I was much too much into this to film it all of yesterday but i'm getting to the
point where it might work so here's my rotary catapult and the stop for that is down here
so if i have a cap that is down there it shoots it out
and the wheel this wheel is going to bring the next one up
and then shoots it so i just need to get the phase right so let's see this comes up here drops it in
falls down and not too early so it doesn't fall at the bottom
And the next one oops i should change the aim
it doesn't pick up as reliably as i'd like it to but uh
the caps all seem to end up in about the same area and now with a dedicated ac motor
i think that runs a bit too fast for my pickup to work properly this motor looks identical to this
one but it's like a different gear ratio on it and i've got this hooked up now so that i can run it.
Except the gears are a little bit out of phase right now so i gotta fix that
So i still need to i need to drop these a little bit earlier so
i'm just going to tweak that a bit more.
I'm still disappointed with how many times these slots come up empty I'm thinking maybe
i should change the shape of this agitator to flip those caps around a little bit better
I'm hoping this ramp will flip more pieces
I got a problem this wrap is just the wrong distance here where you can jam a cap in there
so let's see if i can pry this off and re-glue it somewhere else closer to the edge this time
it really has a hard time getting those in the last few loads oh there and those are stuck good
now i changed the other agitator to be less of a ramp so that it can carry pieces like that up
and flip them over and that seems to be much better at clearing out the last few caps.
There we go I added a mount for the motor and hid away the electrical stuff in here
plus a light bulb in series this is kind of a overload protection
so if the machine stalls the bulb lights up and i know it's stalled.
And i still have enough power for it
plus i hot glued a few extra bits of wood on here where some of the caps were escaping
so this is now ready for testing with the kids
yes
And rachel wants my next project to be a little bit more useful!