Electric Wire Cutter

This was in the 1970's at Intech Inc. I don't think it was an Artos. The machine was mostly mechanical, with very little electronics. The company purchased it used, which means it could easily have been quite old.

It wasn't Artos, but the mechanism looks very familiar. I like the idea of using a tractor feed. More surface area is better for small wires.

One problem was friction in the guides. If there was even the slightest amount of friction in the guides, the roller feed would cause the wire to buckle. That changes the effective length, which does horrible things to the quality of the stripping job. If bad enough, it would jam the mechanism. I spent many an afternoon, getting hypnotized by a stroboscopic flash, watching the mechanism run at speed, and trying to determine the cause of the problem. It was eventually traced to the wire, which as too hard, and therefore too springy. It could not easily be properly straightened coming from the spool. Rather than trash a huge supply of wire, I had some custom guides fabricated, with a hard chrome plated inside, and a less radical funnel entry. It couldn't do short wire lengths, but it didn't jam on bent longer wires.

Even for a simple wire cutter, methinks some effort should be expended in making sure the wire is straight.

Incidentally, whenever I want to reverse engineer such a system, I usually dig out the applicable patents. Those always show how the mechanisms are suppose to work.

I keep visualizing a pick and place humanoid robot, with a meat cleaver attached to one arm.

Eubanks was(is) the other US one, IIRC.

Both were around in that time era.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

That would be the Chinese chicken chopping robot. Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Bingo. That's the name of the wire stripper manufactory that I was trying to recall. Thanks.

It was an earlier version of this one:

I'd forgotten about the pneumatics and the associated noise.

Not much tech detail or manuals on the web pile. However, I found this on how a different machine works:

Do you have any idea how expensive that route is?

Measured in dollar(s) per piece.

Yes, Kynar, UL 1422 and UL 1423. Yes, SPC = Silver Plated Copper, solid conductor Yes, Teflon also. Many gauges from 14 to 30 gauge, many colors, solid and stranded, Type E, ET and EE Yes, 10 colors, Blk, Brn, Red, Org, Yel, Grn, Blu, Vio, Gray, Wht, just like the resistor color code. Laser - tried it and not too good. If it absolutely can not be nicked then maybe, but slow. The edge is burned, not cut, so there are fumes and residual carbon and strange leftovers. Using today's precision blades and machines it's not difficult to get nick free stripping at 3-6000 pieces per hour. As a reward for reading this far we will send the first 50 companies that contact us, a bag of 500 Kynar wires, cut and stripped to your needs, absolutely free. Just mention this post. Limit, 1 per company. Limit, 10" max length. Limit, USA shipping addresses only. Limit, must give us a valid email or phone number. Expect to be pester for future orders. The Sales Department is so going to kill me tomorrow morning when they discover what I've done! snipped-for-privacy@squires.com

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I would be reluctant to call this "robotics". They've had automatic wire cutters and strippers practically since there have been wire and lazy engineers. ;-)

Now, if your mechanism could trundle up to the spool of wire, find the end, start pulling the wire off, and thread itself, now _THAT'S_ a robot! ;-)

Good Luck! Rich

Good idea. I've always wanted a cable and wire untangling robot. The robot optically scans the Gordian Knot, finds the ends, analyzes the spaghetti, and then systematically untangles the mess. No fair cutting the knot.

The neighbors used to have a supply of 10 year olds willing to attempt the feat, but they've all turned college students who allegedly have better things to do.

This is similar, but not quite what I was thinking:

Drivel: In the 1960's I fixed hi-fi junk which included a few wire recorder dictating machines. I don't recall the manufacturer, but there was one that had a juke box like derangement for dispensing the wire reels. You could select the spool with a dial, and it would auto-thread the wire into the recorder mechanism. The same thing could be done for the robotic wire cutter project (with the addition of the meat cleaver).

That is probably a bit of overkill for a single wire cutter. Works great to trim a ream of paper though.

And an identical scrap printer for each student from semester to semester for five years?

That wouldn't scar the wire? I guess you could put a radius at each corner/edge.

And the motor that drives the cam is gonna have to be pretty big to have enough torque to slice the wire, especially anything heavier than #20.

But keep on giving me ideas ... the more the merrier.

Jim

Pure and simple concept. The usual gig is to have each student cut ten wires to a specific length with their machine and then give some trinket (a Harbor Freight DVM for example) to the one with the smallest average delta-l over the ten pieces.

Sort of like measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, and cut with an axe.

Jim

Fifty students a semester, two semesters a year, five year project life ... that's one HELL of a lot of IDENTICAL junkyard windshield wiper drive motors.

-- "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." --Aristotle

SO you don't subscribe to the crawl-walk-run theory of education? We are just BARELY to the crawl stage in this class.

Jim

I thought you meant one unit for one class. You didn't say you'd need many over an extended time.

But sure--one discarded inkjet printer supplies several rollers, each enough for many rubber-coated sections.

Junked inkjet printers are plentiful and free.

If you'd rather buy or make something, go for it.

It wouldn't scar the wire.

I'd suggest guides could be made more easily some place else; HSS is tough stuff.

For that matter, you could replace the HSS toolbit idea with mild steel bars and make & harden inserts from drill rod. Those materials are a lot easier to work.

Like this: hardened mild steel bar insert __________ /_____________________ /________ / / / /| /---------------------------------/--------/ | | .--/. | | | / \\ _ | | | wire-cutting hole -----> O | (_)

Jeez... buy a $1500 HP 6.5 digit meter on E-bay for $150 and give one of them that.

Give them a meter they can use. The $20 Harbor Freight POS is only good for testing battery condition (not actual voltage) and approximate AC line voltage. They are so far off (how far off are they?), that all one gets when one takes a reading is a value that one uses to decide if what they read was (near) what they think they would be looking for, but not the actual precisely measured value. That is what I think of most bottom line "instruments".

While drunk.

I call them a volt-guesser instead of a volt-meter. They're great for a continuity tester and for loaning to the neighbors.

Incidentally, the cheapo Harbor Freight meter is $5.

For a few dollars more, you can get one with a nifty built in clamp, that's most useful for hanging onto the overhead conduit or something while making a measurement.

It also measures AC current, but that's secondary.

Haven't worked much in the public school environment, haveya???

When I'm wanting to measure half a dozen different voltages/currents at once, I find the HF $2.99 meter is within one digit of the lab standard Fluke for years on end. If they aren't DOA, they work for a LONG time accurately.

Jim

Industry ain't that different. There is always a budget limit and when you design power stuff it does make a difference whether a $2.99 Centech meter goes kablouie or smoke comes out of a $1500 HP meter.

Same here. Got five, plus one of their larger models. A client then bought a lot, too. They are surprisingly accurate, good enough for nearly any DC-level circuit debugging. Now if they just hadn't picked that yucky purplish-red bonbon color.