Induction brass annealer redux

[ottsm]

This is an image of the LCD display and rotary knob.
Top Row; Time Setpoint & Actual
2nd Row; Volts & RPM & Peek amps (or current amps while timing)
3rd Row; Temperature of water & Temperature of Capacitor Bank
4th Row; Step number of sequencer & discription



In the video below you can see the LCD display is set to read other things such as water flow and Joules.

 

[SGK]

Either way their case feeder unit is priced right.

The best part about their feeder is the funnel part at the very top (connecting the drop tube to the 'bucket'). Rather hard to make that part and looks nicely done.

Pricing of the feed plates is quite good. I assume they're Plexiglass/acrylic. It's not cheap to get acrylic of decent thickness machined like that at a good price. Add in a few bucks for the shaft coupling and the 'knobs'.

 

[ottsm]

Below is the Arduino board, this one is made by DFrobot and has Bluetooth for easy wire free downloads. This is totally unnecessary I just happen to have the board for another project I did. You will notice that it uses the 3-pin connectors, this make hookup a breeze, DFrobot makes one for the standard Arduino, just do a search for "DFRobot Gravity IO Expansion Shield V7.1" on whomever your going to purchase it from. This also has the 4-pin hookup for the I2C connector that is necessary for the LCD display.



Below are the parts used to get amps, volts and water flow. The water flow sensor is working on its lower margin, I mounted it flat and this seems to be the orientation that produces the highest reading. The amps reading uses a hall effect sensor, search for " Gravity Analog 20A Current Sensor". The voltage reading is just a voltage divider but for the price I could hardly afford to make one myself, search for "Octopus Voltage Divider Brick", the range is 80VDC. In both cases Amazon is not the cheapest, try Robotshop. You will also notice I have a thermistor strapped to the hose, would have been better to be on metal rather then the insulated hose but this was a quick and dirty way of securing it to something.



Next is a simply solid state relay triggered directly from the Arduino output.



Next is the LCD display and encoder knob. I lot of outfits make the 4x20 LCD with I2C communication. Don't forget to get a cable, search for "12" 4-Pin/I2C Connector Cable" on Robotshop. For the rotary knob I use two parts from Sparkfun, the first is "Illuminated Rotary Encoder (RGB) 1098", the 2nd is "Clear Knob for Rotary Encoder 10597". I made my own circuit board, you could just do point to point wiring. You will need two 150 ohm resistors, one 100 ohm and one 10k ohm resistor. If you don't want to mess with the LED's and want more of a plug in play try the following "EC11 Rotary Encoder Module", I have not used this but it looks like it would work.

 

[SGK]

I looked at replacing the Sestos timer with a display and some form of input keypad or such. Membrane keypads are cheap as chips. But when you add in the cost of an LCD display with an I2C breakout board ** it was a lot of hassle for little monetary saving. The Sestos timer is so cheap. That said, once you use code for the timing functions you get all the advantages ottsm has described such as the ability to store presets etc. How much did you pay for the LCD+I2C daughter board?

There are also LCD displays with I2C which have simple input momentary switches (up, down, left and right plus "reset") which can be programmed to whatever purpose. The EZ-Anneal has done exactly this.

Ottsm, you just need to work on an enclosure now!


** For those wondering why we mention I2C, an I2C breakout board, either a separate one or one already strapped to the display, is necessary to dramatically reduce the number of Arduino or PIC I/O connection pins used. Once you have one, however, it can be used in daisy-chain fashion across a bunch of I2C devices.

 

[ottsm]

I looked at replacing the Sestos timer with a display and some form of input keypad or such. Membrane keypads are cheap as chips. But when you add in the cost of an LCD display with an I2C breakout board ** it was a lot of hassle for little monetary saving. The Sestos timer is so cheap. That said, once you use code for the timing functions you get all the advantages ottsm has described such as the ability to store presets etc. How much did you pay for the LCD+I2C daughter board?

There are also LCD displays with I2C which have simple input momentary switches (up, down, left and right plus "reset") which can be programmed to whatever purpose. The EZ-Anneal has done exactly this.

Ottsm, you just need to work on an enclosure now!


** For those wondering why we mention I2C, an I2C breakout board, either a separate one or one already strapped to the display, is necessary to dramatically reduce the number of Arduino or PIC I/O connection pins used. Once you have one, however, it can be used in daisy-chain fashion across a bunch of I2C devices.

I got my LCD several years ago for about $25, I can see several outfits make them now for about $13 (this includes a I2C interface board). A cable is about $2. I like the rotary encoder knob with a push button vs the keys, its harder to program but a better user interface for this application. An EC11 encoder is about $3 and has all the resistors, etc. on the circuit board (go to dfrobot and search "ec11 rotary encoder", they have wiki page for it with all the details). You will need to make a cable, easy just to solder to the EC11 board and use the pins on the other end.

The illuminated encoder is more difficult to come up with, I can see sparkfun is out of the 3 color LED units (Bourns makes them, its the PEL12D and PEL12T series but they aren't going to be threaded and you still need the clear knob which digikey does sell sparkfun parts so it could be on the same order). I'll admit the LED encoder does use up valuable I/O points that could be used for fan control or a case feed system.

One of these days I'll work on the enclosure, wish I had a CNC machine.

 

[SGK]

I've been playing around with ideas for an autofeeder given my PCB can run it automatically. I note that the EZ-Anneal feeder plate which encompasses .308 Win supports case sizes basically from 12mm x 47-52mm. I'm wondering how much 'slop' around that would be ideal to make it easier for the cases to fall into the slots in the plate. I was thinking 3mm on each dimension but then thought I'd ask here as some of you have made these.

(Getting the motor, mounts, mounting bushings and plates for these is rather easy. I haven't yet figured out the drop shoot bit a la EZ-Anneal yet. Of course, something could be designed and 3D printed or whatever but I suspect the part is off-the-shelf rather than purpose designed. Perhaps I am wrong.)

 

[SGK]

I decided to do a full design of this auto-feeder. Have a look here.

https://a360.co/2OvYT8M

Change the settings to photo booth to make things a bit easier to see. You can spin it around etc and look at individual parts by turning the others off, plus you can 'explode' the design. Have a play around.

The intention is that it is freely positionable and sits on the annealer body. The user merely cuts the drop tube to the desired length and aligns the feeder with their induction coil. At a later date I will post a list of parts etc but I already have the motor, the motor mounting plate (3mm acrylic) and a feeder disc suitable for .308 and other similar cases (4.5mm acrylic) ordered. I haven't yet ordered the base plate or had the pedestal, tube clamp and drop shoot made as I am still finalising a few things with the design. (At least the last of these will need to be 3D printed.) I'd like to seek the input of people here, particularly with regard to the following:

1. The angle the tray/dish is held at. It is currently set at 30 degrees.
2. The aperture in the tray/dish. The design needs to work for .223 and up. So the aperture needs to be well less than 45mm in width and it seems the balance point for most cases is circa 14-16mm from the head. So I have selected an aperture of 25mm/1" in width.
3. Any other good suggestions.

If I complete this I will make sure parts can be ordered so others can build it as well. (Your annealer will need to be able to auto-detect a case in the coil and control power to the feeder, turning the feeder off when a case is in the coil. The control PCB I designed for my annealer already has this functionality.)

 

[BillK55]

Have just found a 20a(1000w) unit that will make it all alot faster and easier as well
https://www.ebay.com/itm/142462540092

I'm curious Ross did you end up getting this power supply? I'm still shopping my parts and had seen some similar to this that were significantly cheaper, but I couldn't tell for sure if it had a cooling fan in the case. I'm for cheaper, but I get cautious and watch for shortcuts to cheapness that reduce reliability.

I'd been planning on sticking with 48V 12.5A size with this one https://www.ebay.com/itm/202137794148 (currently at $47 on the slow boat from China), but if yours looks like quality design then I might step up to the 800W version from your supplier.

 

[SGK]

You could send a message to the seller. (You won't get current limiting capability with this supply.) If you need copper tubing, plastic tubing etc I will have a good amount of excess. I also have a couple of fans. Maybe that helps with costs as well. Just PM.

 

[Jdne5b]

I decided to do a full design of this auto-feeder. Have a look here.

https://a360.co/2OvYT8M

That looks great! With the EZ-Anneal price increase, I'm back to planning my own build this winter and would really like to include a case feeder. Did you post a parts list/schematic of your build?

Re #2 - What about shorter cases like 6BR, Blackout, PPC ?

 

[SGK]

Wow I just saw the EZ-Anneal revised pricing. You could probably do this feeder for half the price or less.

In this design the feeder discs can be swapped out. So you would just need one the right size. I have done two designs so far: one which would do .308, 6.5CR, 6x47 etc - anything in that 12mm x 47-52mm range and one for .223 Rem and 6mm PPC. I need to do another for 6.5x55 Swede. Adding others is easy. I'm not looking to become a commercial supplier but what I know I can do with some of the parts (e.g. the base, the motor mounting disc, the feeder disc) is sell my design via the service I use to manufacture them. So you'd get them at basically the price I pay.

I bought the motor on Amazon ($15). The dish/tray is a cake tin off Amazon ($14, perfect dimensions and nice looking). Perspex tube was from eBay. Etc. I think the feeder discs cost about $25 each to laser cut (like anything there are economies of scale here) and the required shaft coupling is $6.

I'm still figuring out manufacturing of the drop shoot as this needs to be 3D printed. Commercial sites aren't cheap. I just priced it at Xometry at $65 for one. That's done in nylon via SLS (which would be perfect). So I am still looking around for a more attractive solution there. I know where I can get much cheaper FDM prototyping done in the UK but not yet where in the US. The pedestal and clamp could be manufactured in many ways; given I have limited tooling skill I will likely just get them printed as well.

I would suggest focusing on your annealer build planning while I tinker away for a bit. Just plan ahead for (a) that something like this will sit on top of it and (b) the fact that you will need case detection and the ability to control power to the feeder. Some people did feeders with additional trap doors etc. I think it is much simpler to control power to the feeder, turning it off when a case is detected so another doesn't fall on top of it. I'm off for a long weekend in Carmel but will post a pic of my now fully tested control board when I get a chance. (I have spare PCBs.)

Re my annealer build (I'm doing two identical ones) I can post a parts list when I am back. It won't be materially different from other here except with respect to IR switch case detection, the control board I designed, fans and the case. The latter is where you can spend next to nothing or a lot. I like nice (and compact).

 

[Jdne5b]

What about 3d printed discs?

Someone built and posted the files for a complete 3d printed bullet feeder. Add in a motor and the available drop tubes/switch from the commercially available options and you have a bullet feeder pretty cheap. Not counting buying a printer.

 

[SGK]

Not economical. Also remember that FDM parts aren't that great.

My discs are laser cut from 4.5mm Acrylic.

Now if I had a Glowforge I would cut them myself. (Three tools for every garage/home: (1) Formlabs Form 2 (2) Glowforge and (3) a Camaster Stinger CNC. I wish.)

I think I saw that thing - I thought it looked awful.

 

[SGK]

will post a pic of my now fully tested control board when I get a chance.

 

[8mm]

Looks cool 8mm.

I envy you guys who own or have access to CNC routing or milling machines. .

Here are pics of my working autofeed. I gave up on the platform and paddle because of too many flying cases, and multiple feeds. I went to a rotary dumper using a second solenoid (same 24V 78 ohm as lower). The tower and chute are 14ga. steel, so should last until the Sun explodes. All cut with a hand grinder w/ cut-off discs. The chute cover is old furnace duct. It snaps off in case of jams. All welds are outside brass paths. Bending parallel walls for the tower was tricky. I used the original design schematic except the second solenoid is in series with the first, powered from the 48V PS instead of the 12V. I'm still trying to get a movie on youtube to post.

 

[8mm]

Here's the modified schematic I used. Thank you again everyone.

 

[SGK]

Ugh I am having an absolute brain fart thinking about the pot voltage divider for current control - particularly which side of the pot I want the 10k to GND in order to have clockwise rotation allow more current.

Time for a coffee or something stronger

 

[SGK]

coffee break over - turn the pot towards the 5V for more current. Onward...

 

[BillK55]

coffee break over - turn the pot towards the 5V for more current. Onward...

I'm glad you didn't say clockwise, because then I was going to ask "looking at it from in front of the panel, or BEHIND?" Glad you got it

 

[SGK]

Like I said, it was a bit of a brain fart LOL

For those using the Mean Well 48V PSU, how many of you installed the remote sense? It seems to me that an up to 0.5V compensation for the drop over the load wiring is neither here nor there for this application. (Plus, to do the its intended job the sense wire would need to connect right at the inductor PCB and we have a switch between that and the PSU.)