Need help with auto starting a motor

[Boncuk]

..., also the use of wood is not higienic)

Is somebody going to have a drink of a crunched can?

 

[Menticol]

Is somebody going to have a drink of a crunched can?

Maybe, who knows?? hahaha kidding, offcourse not, but the spills of soda on the wood, with the sticky I don't know the english word for that, ¿mound? of sugar... Interesting life will become to grow on your machine!

 

[colin mac]

It would be safest to use a key switch to turn that on.

 

[Boncuk]

It would be safest to use a key switch to turn that on.

... and the slowest possible way. This might be alright for private households.

For selling places like restaurants the throughput must be as high as possible.
One can per second makes a ROF of 60 rounds per minute. Crushing the daily average amount of 500 to 700 cans would still take 8:20 to 11:40 minutes.

A big restaurant in my vicinity "procuces" a full truck load of empty cans every week. That equals 60 cubicmeters of cans!

Hans

 

[Boncuk]

Can crusher

Hi Menticol,

I made some experiments with cans yesterday and here is the result:

Nor is the body of the can conductive, neither is the top, not even the opening lever. The only conductive part of the can is the buttom which is untreated pure aluminum. The film is comparable to the enamel on a copper wire to make induction coils.

Poking through the laquer with the probes of the multimeter each part becomes conductive. However it requires a sharp tipped probe or a pin to penetrate the laquer and some force too.

Using the conductance measuring method could easily be done by closing two insulated tips (from each other) via levers thereby poking small holes into the can, similar to a fork used to lift animals digestional leftovers. (Sh... ) This could be done without poking holes into the fingers by positioning the probes out of reach of hands.

Mechanical drives can malfunction, and therefor I better stick with the idea of IR-barrier detection.

Regards

Hans

 

[mneary]

Interesting life will become to grow on your machine!

Might be handy to consider the cleaning process early in the design stage. If I leave anything with sugar around the kitchen, ants find it immediately.

I think IR-barrier detection would be quite reliable, but IR-reflective against the bottom and/or top of the can might be even easier. Might also be more likely to reject improperly oriented (upright) cans. Upright cans would gum up the works of most of the designs I saw on YouTube.

 

[Menticol]

Well it has been a pretty cool industrial design discusion, but I think the OP fell asleep waiting for the circuit. I'm too lazy to re-draw it, so I photographed it from my old book

If I have some mistake please warn me, I'm not very experienced


https://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i264/menticol/Me23026.jpg


https://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i264/menticol/Me23027.jpg

The hand writting on the receiver is to correct a mistake on the book, they forgot to add that capacitor.

To calibrate it, put Emitter in front of Receiver, and turn pot until relay turns on. Connect relay's NC pin to 555 timer circuit (mentioned posts before), so when the beam is broken the 555 is triggered.

I think the receiver's relay can be removed, and the 2N3906 colector be connected directly to 555 circuit trigger through a 2N3904 NPN.

 

[Menticol]

Sorry by double posting, editing was disabled

Nice job Hans! I have never imagined the top wasn't conductive, but only the bottom. There's a problem with the sharp tips as sensors / poking into the can. When the can is crushed, the sensors will be buried into the can, breaking them or changing it's shape.

The IR solution is more suitable, but harder to build for the inexperienced OP. So I suggest to use the flat sensor I mentioned before, wired to the 555 circuit also posted before

 

[Boncuk]

Can crusher

Hi Menticol,

I also like the idea of capacitive sensing.

Concerning the OP I'm afraid to say that his approach is not in the right sequence. As he wrote me in an email he wants the electronics done first and then turn towards the mechanical part.

May be somebody else can convince him of the fact, that electronics work is far more flexible than mechanical.

He wants a lot of "cool effects" which have to be taken care of by knowing his mechanical design. If I plan to make a can counter and he decides not to have it I must redesign the circuit because a valid count has some influence on the control circuit too, meaning to employ some more logic in the circuit.

May be I'll go for some "cool effects" too and have R2D2 (Starwars) scream while the can is being crunched.

Cleaning of the machine shouldn't be any problem reducing mechanical parts to a minimum, that is, using pneumatic cylinders instead of oily gears, open sprockets and possibly chains. If the chassis is made of stainless steel you could even take the device to a car wash station. (after having removed the electronic part)
An additional advantage of a pneumatic actuator: No compensation necessary for different size cans. Just the stroke long enough to cover all sizes.

An inadvertantly vertically dumped can might (just to avoid the double can ) be corrected for correct positioning easily by shaping the "load" channel accordingly (like a bowl), so the can will get out of balance and tilt either way.

Experiment: Drop a can 100% vertically on a hard surface tilted 2 degrees. Guess how it will come to rest. (Top heavier than the bottom anyway)

Regards

Hans

 

[Bob Warner]

Hey guys,

I did not fall asleep, just been looking for parts.

I can design the crusher and submit it to you for assistance with the electronics. I just thought that the electronics would be easy to adapt to the design by placing parts where they are needed. Like I said early in this thread, I do not know my way around electronics.

I will draw up a design and post it here for all to see. Thanks for your interest and your help.

Bob