Hello all, I look forward to absorbing more from this community and getting more ideas down the road! Right now I am working on a project to automate a fixed adhesive dispenser. I have ordered the parts and assembled a belt drive C beam and smoothieboard based XY table that will sit below the dispenser tip. The table is working and I have created adhesive paths in fusion 360 so that the table will move and distribute the adhesive. What I would ultimately like to do is simply be able to place a part on the XY table, use a normally open detection switch to detect the part, and have the smoothie board run the XY table and adhesive machine. I have some experience with Arduino and Xcarve so there will be some learning involved but I think it is within my abilities. The areas I am concerned about are mainly how to program the input for the sensor and the output to actuate the pneumantic selenoid that controls the adhesive dispenser. Does anyone know of any helpful resources, tutorials, and/or build logs that might be helpful for this project? I have searched the forums and found a lot of useful information but not much in terms of actuating selenoids so I am hoping someone could point me in the right direction. I am also curious if there are any specific software that might suit my needs. Most of what I can find is optimized for CNC milling, laser engraving, plasma torce, 3d print, etc. These can work just fine but I though I would ask. Thanks!
Hello Akuz, Welcome to the Openbuilds virtual hacker space! If its a repetitive task that will always be the same routine I would suggest setting up an arduino to run the simple gcode operation ever time the switch is detected. Check out this project by @Jan Koeppen Assembly Machine I think will be a big help to get you point in the right direction. Good luck on the Build we look forward to seeing how you make out so please be sure to Start a Build and share it so we can all learn together Mark
That is an incredible example but it doesn't have many posted details. Our machine will be less complex for certain so it should be doable! Why do you recommend using an Arduino? Shouldn't the smoothieboard be able to handle these functions?
