Kit Visco Machine

[Twignberry]

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p132/rangaz/Printed%20Visco%20Machine/kit_zpsoku1dgu3.png

The first kit is almost together now, its just missing a few of the smaller M3 fasteners and the electronics bracket. I'm spending my time putting the machine through its paces to work out any bugs.

Now that the bill of materials has be set, I will offer two options.

Option 1 - Complete Kit $270 USD

Contains

-all printed components

-all fasteners and extrusions

-bearings, lazy susan and 8mm bearings

-Electronics (Arduino clone Mega preloaded with software, RAMPS 1.4, 3xStepper drivers)

-3x Stepper Motors CW cables and connector

Exlcudes

-Power Supply 12V these will be region dependent so I cant supply. A free hijacked PC power supply will be fine.

-Thread (24 pieces) because I can't beat ebay prices for spooled thread and its bulky to ship.

-Shipping as it will depend on where its going

Option 2 - Plastic and Hardware $175 USD

Contains

-all printed components

-all fasteners and extrusions

-bearings, lazy susan and 8mm bearings

Exlcudes

-Power Supply 12V these will be region dependent so cant supply. A hijacked PC power supply will be fine.

-Thread (24 pieces) because I can't beat ebay prices for spooled thread and its bulky to ship.

-Shipping as it will depend on where its going

-Electronics (Arduino clone Mega, RAMPS 1.4, 3xStepper drivers)

-3x Stepper Motors CW cables and connector

The Electronics and steppers are quite heavy and very readily available just about everywhere around the globe; I've provided an option to source them yourself locally to avoid paying for shipping twice to my door then yours. I'll obviously offer a place to download the software and instructions on how to install it on the Arduino (very simple). To configure settings to tune for your powder/thread, you will need to do this anyway.


I have set a goal to have typical shipping prices for a few major regions by this time next week and decide on whether an assembly video or drawing will be better.

Once I get started on building, I estimate I will be able to produce 2-3 units per week so if you would like to place yourself in line, PM me. Payment wont be required until the kit is ready to ship.

Also note that the current set prices are pegged to AUD which is currently at a low

[MrB]

How specific does one have to be when looking for the Arduino clone? ATmega chips in a wide array of specs are used, in these things, getting the right ones might be helpfull... ramps 1.4, thats pretty much a specific spec, so that should be ok from any make, but the stepper motors, and drivers, thats going to be somewhat of a jungle, and your going to have a LOT of questions like "will THIS ONE work" and so on. (If not from anyone else, so from me.)

The white flatpack to be looks.. amazing.

 

The multicolor one was a lot more of an eyecatcher, where as the white one is cleaner, and, both will be black as the inside of the devils ass, after a few runs with BP. Nice one.

B!

[Mike]

Sounds very nice. Now wait what shipping costs.

Also don't you think thatpipes, nuts and bolts could be left out to save weight. These are normally quite universal everywhere.

[starman]

Yes ....I am interested in the complete kit.....where are you shipping from.....I am in the new England USA area ?

[taiwanluthiers]

Actually, I was thinking if it's possible to make a hand cranked version that won't require stepper motors...

 

Also if you're going to start offering the kit in a massive number, you may want to think about casting the component rather than printing it (use the printed part as prototype to make the mold) which will save time and money (though a professional mold will cost lots, maybe a not so professional one made of fiberglass or rubber, and then the parts cast in fiber reinforced resin)

Edited October 21, 2015 by taiwanluthiers

[alvin001]

Taiwan that propably is not very interesting, i would assume that a big ammount would be maybe 50 machines. Most people can buy visco free.

[OblivionFall]

This is very interesting.

 

How much does it cost to make a foot of the visco fuse? Any ideas? I assume that the BP costs about $3-$5 per pound.

[MrB]

Once you got the machine, your using a couple of grams worth of BP for a meter of fuse. The coat of NC is probably going to be the most expensive component. And the price of that would depend on your source, i suppose.

B!

Edited October 21, 2015 by MrB

[zan89]

Twignberry, from where are sending it?

[Twignberry]

Thanks for the interest and suggestions/encouragement.

 

These would be coming out of Aus. Cost once set up is peanuts, a pound of powder makes ALOT of fuse and whilst thread may initially be expensive, 500m spools will make a lifetimes worth of fuse.

 

Molding whilst fast is a lot more labour and capital intensive plus I cant as easily revise and adapt molds. Prints I just vary a cad model a bit here and there then resend to print. Kinda like the difference between inkjetting a logo on paper vs stamping it.

 

Now for the bad news. I've got a few very big events coming up that are going to swallow all my time and attention for the next few weeks so will probably be dark for the next few weeks until mid Dec, at which point my focus is back on 100%

[Twignberry]

Hello again to all,

Its been a while and I'm happy to be back. I've got a number of great and not so great updates.

First to get the bad out the way, shipping is a deal breaker ($120/kit) unless you folks have endless supplies of money. I certainly don't and would prefer not to support such an inefficient monopoly. As an alternative, I'm working with a supplier to bring shipping cost down and hopefully make the machine more accessible.

Now for the good. So far I have shown you a quick video of a machine that can make visco. The trouble from there is revising the machine to make great visco, trouble free all the time. There have been countless hours of trial, error, more error, a bit more error and finally success, so here's my results

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yp2nP96Jvw

 

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p132/rangaz/Printed%20Visco%20Machine%20MKII/IMG_5583_zpsn0ph3vam.jpg

 

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p132/rangaz/Printed%20Visco%20Machine%20MKII/IMG_5587_zpsr0e1hvsx.jpg

 

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p132/rangaz/Printed%20Visco%20Machine%20MKII/IMG_5585_zpsqtalpp2x.jpg

 

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p132/rangaz/Printed%20Visco%20Machine%20MKII/IMG_5584_zps0tiwhteq.jpg

 

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p132/rangaz/Printed%20Visco%20Machine%20MKII/IMG_5588_zps7xepmwkp.jpg

The frame, drives, dies etc probably all look the same as the previous video/pictures and its true. This has definitely been a case of the devil is in the details. The two biggest issues I was facing were
1)powder metering into the first die
2)providing sufficient tension to reliably pull the fuse through the two dies

Problem number one is caused by the fact different powders will flow differently, die/funnel geometries for BP didn't with H3 and vice versa. This is a big issue because too little powder and the fuse doesn't compact properly and is unreliable to burn, either fizzling or jumping ahead. Too much powder and the machine jams, leaving you a mess to cut out and start again. Lucky the design is easy to clear

The solution for me was to move the leader threads to fixed supports on the frame. Before they were mounted direct to the spindle and rotated with the die. Centrifugal effects would reduce the amount of powder that fed through leaving underpacked fuse but ocassionally a clump would fall through and cause a jam.

With fixed leaders, the thread sweeps through the powder as the funnel rotates. This meters the powder more evenly and can be adjusted by moving the leader threads out and in.

Problem two was that the winding drive pulling the fuse through the machine would often slip because it only had a point contact. After a few iterations of design, I settled on a new mechanism. It's arranged such that as tension increases, it tightens the tensioner pulley, increasing grip. It's also now wrapped around 2/3 of the winder drive. This arrangement is running reliably now.

One of the more handy additions was the spooler. Not a necessity but convenient. It is constantly rotating faster than the feed of visco but it is set to low power so deliberately stalls. This is a simple and effective method of automatically spooling.

Another small addition has been some quick clips for mounting the control board. Its currently running off a 12V, 2.5A supply, the USB cable is there to power the arduino as I'm using a RAMPS 1.3 board. Newer boards only require the 12V supply.

Among the physical changes, I've also tinkered with speeds, feeds, die sizes, powder types and burn rates to get the final product. So here's the result

 

Before coating

 

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p132/rangaz/Printed%20Visco%20Machine%20MKII/IMG_5594_zpsbnsauomj.jpg

After a single pass through my coating tool

 

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p132/rangaz/Printed%20Visco%20Machine%20MKII/IMG_5600_zpsllsthhf4.jpg

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPThLTgw4Ng

These are each 1 foot long, made from polyester thread and riced/reground pine BP. The thin NC coating is from double base pistol powder and was done with a simple tool that I'll show later.

Burn time was very consistent but a little slower than commercial visco at 36s per foot. I believe speed could be adapted by using something along the lines of benzo-lift with only a small proportion of whistle. I tried BP and H3, but prefer BP for simplicity. H3 burns closer to 30s/foot.

[lloyd]

Nice job!

I suggest that you might get a little faster burn rate (and perhaps also a more 'even' burn) from Mercerized cotton thread than from polyester. The polyester melts, and the liquid can do unpredictable things with the powder core, including carrying away some heat at random times.

 

Cotton will smoulder and 'hold in' the heat better. But with the gauge of thread you're using, and the NC overcoat, I doubt if you'd get any 'after burn' at all.

 

That's a pretty nice machine, and very compact, too. Please tell me more about its cost, and also why shipping is so high. I'd be interested in owning one.

 

I have a full-sized time fuse spinner for commercial-grade "bickford style" 1/4" time fuse. It operates almost identically to yours, except both first and second spinners are located coaxially on the vertical axis of the first column. The coater and dryer are part of the process, rather than a separate operation. It uses jute twine for the first and second wraps, cotton for the core tracers, and cotton tape for the overwrap (per the old-style bickford method).

 

LLoyd

Edited December 14, 2015 by lloyd

[memo]

the video in your post needs to be logged into with a password. the machine is looking great.

 

memo

[MrB]

Wanted one before. Want one now.

But you really should forgo poly, and use cotton.

 

Shipping pricetag... Well, it's not THAT bad. But then again, i bet thats not shipping to Sweden...

So i see your point.

On the upside, if you would be willing, "anyone" with a printer could make the plastic parts, and most hardware stores should be able to provide the mounting bits.

The electronics, and the software... Cheap china knock-offs from DX.com, should work.And they ship globally, for free. No idea how they do that. The biggest issue might be getting the motors, on a budget. But they aren't crazy large, so it shouldn't be that bad.

 

I really like your color-combinations. Realistically, it doesn't really matter, and i'd probably want something mono-color my self, but it looks freaking amazing.

 

 

I have a full-sized time fuse spinner for commercial-grade "bickford style" 1/4" time fuse. It operates almost identically to yours, except both first and second spinners are located coaxially on the vertical axis of the first column. The coater and dryer are part of the process, rather than a separate operation. It uses jute twine for the first and second wraps, cotton for the core tracers, and cotton tape for the overwrap (per the old-style bickford method).

 

I like this design. I would want to feed a strip of paper in to the fuse, between the layers of thread, and built like this, that should be possible. Not easy, but possible.

B!

Edited December 14, 2015 by MrB

[lloyd]

The biggest problem with a paper layer is the same problem with the cotton tape overwrap -- that of getting it to 'lay' evenly without gaps OR excessive overlap.

 

It might be more productive to feed a strip in longitudinally through a "hemmer foot" (in order to wrap and close it), then smooth the wrap with some fairly long rollers rotating at the same pace as the counter-wind to follow.

 

Lloyd

Edited December 14, 2015 by lloyd

[MrB]

Yeah, a long roll of paper, feed through a die that wraps it around the first layer of strings is how it's generally done.Making it wrap in the same direction as the next layer of thread causes it to close properly. I'm thinking there might be a issue with how hard the strings pull, you might need to pull harder once the paper is added to the design, but then the die should help counter it, so it's mostly a matter of making sure the motor manages to do the job. But it's only theory at this point, I'm nowhere near a point where i can pretend to be thinking about a design for the addon. First thing would be to get to grips with the machine it self, and then overcome the cozy lazyness of just using it as is.

But i need fuse with higher tensile strength, for making cakes and such. So i want it. Which doesn't mean i'll get around to making it. There is perfectly usable workarounds, that you can easily use instead of stringing all the tubes together on a continues fuse.

B!

[lloyd]

In the Bickford old-style, the cotton tapes are wound and counter-wound, just like the first two twine wraps. It takes a lot of 'tuning' to get that just right.

 

Speed-ratios be damned! It has more to do with what the cotton tape just 'wants to do' on any particular day. To that end, there's a variable tensioning device on both tape reels, so you can adjust it to the tape/weather/air gods' whims of today.

 

I made almost 20K ft of it commercially on that machine: All I can say is that each time I turned it on, it was a four-hour-long heart attack!

 

Lloyd

Edited December 14, 2015 by lloyd

[Twignberry]

Paper wraps would definitely be in the cards just not right now. It's taken enough effort to get the machine to its current state. It really would be something to be completely independent in fuse manufacture.

 

Agreed on switching to cotton if for no other reason than polyester STINKS!!!! I ordered some from China a few weeks ago so I'll test it out when it arrives.

 

Now for part two of the post, Coating!!

 

This tool is completely inline so very easy to pull through, the exposed belly cavity ensures the fuse gets coated evenly all round. With a 3mm exit diameter, the fuse ends up with a very thin but still waterproof coating after evaporation. The best part is it opens for easy feed and setup, viscosity of the NC prevents it from leaking out the ends. The funnel can be any soda bottle as the body is threaded to accept standard soda bottle tops. I haven't tried it yet but I bet it would make great black match. The only thing missing is a flange or tie-down point to secure it.

 

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p132/rangaz/Coating%20Tool/coater%20section%20view_zpsgsigd9x7.jpg

 

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p132/rangaz/Coating%20Tool/IMG_5596_zpszx1jrtbl.jpg

 

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p132/rangaz/Coating%20Tool/IMG_5597_zpso2pykszx.jpg

 

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p132/rangaz/Coating%20Tool/IMG_5595_zpsewmxxogy.jpg

 

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p132/rangaz/Coating%20Tool/IMG_5599_zpspyjn1aye.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

[lloyd]

One question, and one observation:

 

Q: Your CAD drawing shows a left-hand thread bottle. Where do I get those? <G>

 

O: I don't know if the 'cut off' bottle shown in your photos was just for the pictures, or if you actually cut them off for use. If you do, and anything stops the machine, or if the fuse momentarily becomes thinner due to (say) a powder funnel jam like you've had occasionally in past, you'll end up with a 'leaker', and it'll be a mess.

I had to re-do the coater on my 1/4" machine to better suit the coatings I was using. 'Ended up with a bottle-fed coating reservoir where the level in the reservoir was kept constant by a gravity-feed arrangement, and a large-diameter pulley gently curved the fuse down into, then back out of the liquid. A 360-degree rubber 'squeegee' cleaned off excess, and allowed it to flow back to the reservoir.

[Twignberry]

Number 1, section views can be confusing at times. I assure you it is right hand thread and fits standard soda bottles, else I would have gone through hell to find/make a left hand thread Coke bottle for the photos,

 

Number 2, the fuse coating happens in a separate operation. I chose to do this for a number of reasons. Your average amateur isn't going to want to spend a long time for setup/tuning and have the space to run a continuous machine. They take TLC and experience to run right and a jam or failure means you've got to reset everything. Probably the more important reason was that the winder runs off the same board as the rest of the machine, given signal deterioration and resistance losses, the cable cannot be long enough to accommodate the length required for the NC to dry. I'm going for a compact system that can be stored easily, taken out and be producing fuse in 5 minutes. This comes with its own design compromises.

 

I initially worked with two separate designs for a coating machine as you describe but scaled down but they were a pain to set and top up and were more difficult to pull through.

 

In the latest iteration I have just posted, setup takes seconds and coating 100ft of fuse doesn't take more than a minute (I wasn't timing). Once dry 30 seconds later, I just rewound it onto the same spool. If for some reason there is a stoppage while coating, there really is no mess, it only leaks if no fuse is in place. While the fuse is stationary, leakage is prevented or at least slowed for all practical purposes by the low head pressure of the funnel, viscosity of the NC and capillary effects around the tiny clearance between thread and hole

[lloyd]

"...They take TLC and experience to run right and a jam or failure means you've got to reset everything."

-0-

Oh, YES, they DO! <G>

 

Lloyd

[MrB]

Would a soft silicone o-ring cause enough "sticktion" to disturb the threads on the outer winding? The idea is to reduce the layer of NC as much as possible, and getting away with what got soaked in to the cotton, and what fits "between" the threads is more then enough to waterproof the fuse.

 

Also, something like a silicone o-ring would let it accept a small variance in fuse diameter, letting you use the coating head for both paper, and no paper fuses down the line.

 

Final thought. Looks like your still having some BP leaking through when you put it in to the coating head. I guess thats one of the drawbacks of spooling it, and coating at a later time. You really have to report back when your using cotton, it behaves different from poly, and i am not sure if thats going to make intermediate storing uncoated better, or worse. It will make the coating stage behave different for sure, the thread actually soak up the NC, so you have to be careful not to leave "to much" on there, or it will soak all the way through to the BP. Having NC / BP slurry covered in NC coated string should be fairly consistent for burntime, but thats not quite the kind of time delay were looking for, i guess.

 

Nice. Very nice.

B!

[FlaMtnBkr]

It looks great and I'm sure a lot more work went in to it than most realize.

 

I can't tell from your posts, but have you tried very fine granules for your BP instead of a powder? It would require some fairly fine screens to get the right cut but it should flow out of the funnel much better and not make as big a mess if there are any leaks. But if it's working well with powder that is probably best as you can probably use other powders to make effect fuse like the colored flying fish fuse.

 

Second question, have you tried using a colored star composition to make colored flying fish fuse? That stuff is harder to get and expensive and would make the unit even more cost effective if that is something you use and buy.

 

I have wanted to make one of these for a long time but have never gotten serious about it. Experimenting with different compositions would be one of the first things I try once I had a good supply of visco. Not like I don't already have a good supply of visco.

 

Nice job!

[Greg]

twignberry, did you try the cotton thread ?

[Twignberry]

Yup, I did indeed. Made super colourful rainbow fuse.

 

Ran in the machine just the same and produced serviceable fuse. It did not burn underwater but I think its because I used scratch mix priming grade BP instead of granulated and remilled hot BP. The two improvements were the smell of the smoke and reduction in slag.