[MOC] Lego Technic Brick Sorter

[Cyberprog]

Hello fellow AFOL's!

My account finally got approved so figured I'd show off my creation to y'all.

This MOC started off as the 42055 Bucket Wheel Excavator. I built the set originally as a fully Bluetooth model using two sBricks and two battery boxes.

I chose to put 8 motors into this model, rather than the single XL motor Lego decided to use in conjunction with their traditional uber complicated gearbox and hand of God operation.  

1) Upper Conveyor - XL motor (though I may swap this for a M motor later)
2) Lower Conveyor - M Motor
3) Lower Conveyor Rotation - M Motor
4) Upper Body Rotation - M Motor
5) Bucket Wheel Up/Down - M Motor
6) Bucket Wheel - L Motor
7) Track R - L Motor
8) Track L - L Motor

You can see how it came out here;

It was well received at its first show at the Brick Express (a GertLUG organised show at the Avon Valley Railway near Bristol in 2019, but I noticed that the digging function was...pants. What kids *really* enjoyed was putting handfuls of bricks into the side of the wheel and watching them run through the machine and into a waiting rock truck.

So I ripped a load of stuff off and gave it a hopper at the end of the arm.

Further reading of the set instructions led me to the "B" model, which was a "rock crusher" but featured a rudimentary brick sorter. So I scaled that up a bit and threw it on the back.

Things grew with time and lockdown...

And grew

To where it is now 3 years later!

The sorter features an independently powered feeder hopper with a double wide belt, feeding a 2.5m long main conveyor. The bricks (3062b and 553c) fall down into a fast transfer conveyor and are thrown down to the end of the yellow trommel. This is rotated by a set of wheels underneath. The smaller 3062b's fall through the 1 stud wide gap in the banana gears falling out the left hand side, and the 553c's helix out and fall out the right hand side.

I regularly exhibit this MOC at local shows (I'm a proud member of GertLUG) and it always attracts a crowd. The noise it makes is very noticeable at the end of a show when I turn it off!

Autistic people are drawn to it like moths to a flame, I've had kids spend entire afternoons repeatedly emptying and filling it's bins, to the point where I can go wander a show and leave them in charge!

It also regularly eats gears (hence I've started ganging gears, though I managed to twist up some axles after doing this!) And wears through belt pieces. I continue to strive for perfection, and it will likely never be complete.

The next challenge for me is colour separation and I have a proof of concept working, and am experimenting with 3d printed parts to achieve my goals now.

Feel free to ask any questions!

(And if anyone has any good ideas on feeding singular bricks every 5s I'm all ears!)

[Mr Jos]

Awesome project! Seeing kids happy at exhibitions with your machine is so great indeed.

If you want to do color separation, what color sensor/platform will you use?

 

And welcome to the forum, awesome first post!

[MxWinters]

I've had the pleasure of seeing this (and maybe fiddling with it) a couple of times in person now. It is an amazing machine and so fascinating to watch, maybe I'm one of those moths you speak of 🤔. The main superstructure and the sorting mechanism is extremely well designed and runs really well.

Fantastic work Cyberprog.

[Cyberprog]

1 hour ago, Mr Jos said:

Awesome project! Seeing kids happy at exhibitions with your machine is so great indeed.

If you want to do color separation, what color sensor/platform will you use?

 

And welcome to the forum, awesome first post!

So the colour separation is working already using the control+ education colour sensor, and pybricks.

It's the feeding bricks to it slow enough for it to "read" the brick, then nudge it off the belt that is the tricky part!

12 minutes ago, MxWinters said:

I've had the pleasure of seeing this (and maybe fiddling with it) a couple of times in person now. It is an amazing machine and so fascinating to watch, maybe I'm one of those moths you speak of 🤔. The main superstructure and the sorting mechanism is extremely well designed and runs really well.

Fantastic work Cyberprog.

Thanks Morgan! It's very much a demonstration of CI/CD pipelining :)

[MxWinters]

38 minutes ago, Cyberprog said:

Thanks Morgan! It's very much a demonstration of CI/CD pipelining :)

Your welcome
My truck is the same, 6 years and counting

I must say that CI/CD pipelining troubles me greatly, such a euphemistic term for continuously bodging it 😂🤣😂🤣😂

As for suggestions, ill have a play with some bricks in a minute and see what I can come up with.

Edited June 11, 2022 by MxWinters
Added last line

[Cyberprog]

7 minutes ago, MxWinters said:

Your welcome
My truck is the same, 6 years and counting

I must say that CI/CD pipelining troubles me greatly, such a euphemistic term for continuously bodging it 😂🤣😂🤣😂

As for suggestions, ill have a play with some bricks in a minute and see what I can come up with.

I printed a load of those rings and auger bits last weekend but not had time to tinker yet.

[MxWinters]

3 hours ago, Cyberprog said:

I printed a load of those rings and auger bits last weekend but not had time to tinker yet.

I saw that, they sure look interesting. I wonder is that screw fit in these:


The 1x 3062b at a time thing is more trickier than I thought, none of my first ideas worked properly so I'm still working on it

[Mr Jos]

The arm that flips them of the belt, I see it makes a full 360° turn now, can't you add 2 more arms to it, so it only rotates 90° to flip an item of the belt? That way you win loads of time and they can follow each other faster.

For the 1 by 1 feeding, you should be looking at a speed difference.

The belt in front of the scanner should run slower, and already narrowing down to 1 piece. Then the scanning belt has to run at a way higher speed (like you run now is certainly fast enough).

See for example my pin sorters, I also had to feed them 1 by 1 and had all kinds of lengths/colors that need to be pulled apart for a scan. I have a few different setups with continuous/stopping belts.

Continuous slow feeding from a big hopper on a slow belt, to a continuous running faster scanning belt;

Continuous fast feeding from a big hopper on increasing speeds 3x belt narrowing down, to a forward/reverse/stop running fast scanning belt;

This one has a return (turn motor backwards to eject pin back in the hopper) if scan result did not return a valid pin. The large feeding belts also accelerate every 5seconds when no pin is scanned (if the belt is near empty).

Start/stop feeding from a big hopper on a slow belt, to a start/stop faster scanning belt (1motor for both belts);

My oldest version, it had no return option, just put all unrecognized in the middle bin. If the time between 2 pins was to short to make the movement of the arm, the conveyors would shortly stop and restart to pull a gap.

@MxWinters / @Cyberprog;

I think these 3062b pieces will fit perfectly on these small chain conveyors, so you should have a setup that turns them all in the same direction so they fit on a 1 wide track, lets stacked items fall off, and then create a speed difference. If you make an opening in the side like I did in my middle video, larger pieces will fall off, and if turned sideways they will turn correct, or also fall back off.

 

I will follow this project with great pleasure to see what you will come up with.

Edited June 12, 2022 by Mr Jos
Typo

[Cyberprog]

That is very cool Jos! I like the zigzag conveyor and how you narrowed the feed and oriented them, and then just spat the overflow back into the bin.

You're right, the speeds could be modified. I probably need to code it better with step reading and just pushing one brick off at a time. That may be far simpler and more elegant. Because I'm only targeting two colours, I could just have an open/close flap, read brick, if gold open flap, feed until I stop seeing gold, then close, feed until I see gold again.

What chain were you using for your belts? NVM, looked on the PC and it's the small chain - have ordered a load to play with :)

Edited June 12, 2022 by Cyberprog