Recycling / reusing old machinery?
Posted by HanClinto
|
Recycling / reusing old machinery? January 16, 2009 04:18PM |
As I'm collecting parts to build my first Repstrap, an opportunity came up at work today where I /might/ be able to obtain some old no-longer-used SMT machines.
Apparently there's a paste printer, a pick-and-place, and an oven.
My ability to acquire one of these machines is by no means guaranteed, but in theorizing about it, I was wondering: if you had access to a surplus specialized Cartesian robot such as the paste printer or the pick-and-place, what would you do?
A ) Would you extract the motors and lead screws alone?
B ) Would you gut it and ditch everything except for the core Cartesian assembly, wiring it up with new RepRap electronics? (Possibly salvaging and adapting the pick-and-place grabber as an attachable head [like the milling or extruding head]).
C ) Would you try to adapt the existing hardware and electronics "as-is" with as little hardware changes as possible?
D ) Something else I haven't thought of?
It seems silly to pitch a whole industrial robot to only keep the stepper motors -- what all might I expect to be useful from such a thing?
In the three R's of reducing, reusing, and recycling -- too often I think people focus on the usually-inefficient method of melt-down recycling before looking at the more desirable options of reducing and reusing. Re-use is very attractive to me, and being able to salvage an old industrial robot has a lot of potential in my mind.
On a side note, would such a thing be called a ScrapStrap?
Anyways, looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
--clint
Apparently there's a paste printer, a pick-and-place, and an oven.
My ability to acquire one of these machines is by no means guaranteed, but in theorizing about it, I was wondering: if you had access to a surplus specialized Cartesian robot such as the paste printer or the pick-and-place, what would you do?
A ) Would you extract the motors and lead screws alone?
B ) Would you gut it and ditch everything except for the core Cartesian assembly, wiring it up with new RepRap electronics? (Possibly salvaging and adapting the pick-and-place grabber as an attachable head [like the milling or extruding head]).
C ) Would you try to adapt the existing hardware and electronics "as-is" with as little hardware changes as possible?
D ) Something else I haven't thought of?
It seems silly to pitch a whole industrial robot to only keep the stepper motors -- what all might I expect to be useful from such a thing?
In the three R's of reducing, reusing, and recycling -- too often I think people focus on the usually-inefficient method of melt-down recycling before looking at the more desirable options of reducing and reusing. Re-use is very attractive to me, and being able to salvage an old industrial robot has a lot of potential in my mind.
On a side note, would such a thing be called a ScrapStrap?
Anyways, looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
--clint
Sorry, only registered users may post in this forum.