Seeking Metal 3D design and prototyping Resource(s)

[curious aardvark]

Ah - right I was envisaging a continuous cylinder being sliced into sections.
Individual seedlings, yeah that's a serious handling problem.

What you want is a robotics forum.
Cheap robotic arms could probably be taught to do this task.
And there are some really useful and relatively cheap arms around.

You'd need to design a special gripper/hand/holder for the seedlings and a feeding system - which is where the 3d printing comes into play.
But for the actual job itself - you need a robotic arm or two :-)

My knowlefe on such things is pretty sketchy. But I do remember seeing a kickstarter recently about one with easy to change 'tools' and a simple learning curve.
this kind of thing: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...rial-robot-arm
quick glance shows a lot of them around.

So you need a bunch of roboticists to tell you which one can do what you want and to actually write the software and artificial intelligence routines to make it work :-)

[MadScientist]

Thank you for that suggestion. And also for the link to Mirobot's KickStarter.

That sounds a little pricey though, for my garage project Especially if I need 2 Mirobots = $600+. hmmm... but do not want to rule anything out yet, when the manual option is such a pain in the neck, literally!

I'd always imagined robotization of a manual process would involve machine vision apart from mechatronics. Since your robotization suggestion did not include optics, I suppose you envision the cutting position and plane to be determined by the mechanized 'feed mechanism; itself, right?

Just that I cannot envision what such a "feed mechanism" would be like. Any ideas, please? Or links to any specialized forums where I can seek such 'design' help?

Thanks a LOT!

[Ankeruhrbj]

Ah - right I was envisaging a continuous cylinder being sliced into sections.
Individual seedlings, yeah that's a serious handling problem.

What you want is a robotics forum.
Cheap robotic arms could probably be taught to do this task.
And there are some really useful and relatively cheap arms around.

You'd need to design a special gripper/hand/holder for the seedlings and a feeding system - which is where the 3d printing comes into play.
But for the actual job itself - you need a robotic arm or two :-)

My knowlefe on such things is pretty sketchy. But I do remember seeing a kickstarter recently about one with easy to change 'tools' and a simple learning curve.
this kind of thing: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...rial-robot-arm
quick glance shows a lot of them around. mcdvoice survey

So you need a bunch of roboticists to tell you which one can do what you want and to actually write the software and artificial intelligence routines to make it work :-)

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[tommyshelbyop]

Ah - right I was envisaging a continuous cylinder being sliced into sections. Individual seedlings, yeah that's a serious handling problem. What you want is a robotics forum. Cheap robotic arms could probably be taught to do this task. And there are some really useful and relatively cheap arms around. You'd need to design a special gripper/hand/holder for the seedlings and a feeding system - which is where the 3d printing comes into play. But for the actual job itself - you need a robotic arm or two :-) My knowlefe on such things is pretty sketchy. But I do remember seeing a kickstarter recently about one with easy to change 'tools' and a simple learning curve. this kind of thing: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...rial-robot-armmcdvoicequick glance shows a lot of them around. So you need a bunch of roboticists to tell you which one can do what you want and to actually write the software and artificial intelligence routines to make it work :-)

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