MesaTactical
Mechanical
- Nov 17, 2004
- 40
Normally I hang around in the SolidWorks forum, but I have had an idea for a while and I thought you folks here might be able to help me with it.
Some of our products include, as a component, a length of 1/4" OD Santoprene tubing. We buy this stuff in 200 foot lengths and cut it down using - I'm not making this up - a paper cutter. This is slow and one of these days I or an employee is going to cut a finger off. I have contacted a few rubber distributors, and those who are even interested in selling us pre-cut lengths want prohibitive prices.
I have been imagining some kind of simple machine where I load the coiled tubing on a spindle, then pull a crank that pulls a set length of tubing through some paired wheels, then slices the tubing with the final arc of the crank. Then the crank is released and pulled again for another piece. We have multiple lengths up to about 9 inches, so I would need to be able to easily reset the length of travel of the crank for these various parts.
Getting fancy, I see no reason why a stepper motor couldn't be hooked up to the same device to fully automate our rubber cutting. But that's a subject for another day. A simple hand-operated machine would be wonderful enough at this point.
Is anyone away of an off-the-shelf machine like this? Failing that, how would I go about getting someone to design and build one?
Some of our products include, as a component, a length of 1/4" OD Santoprene tubing. We buy this stuff in 200 foot lengths and cut it down using - I'm not making this up - a paper cutter. This is slow and one of these days I or an employee is going to cut a finger off. I have contacted a few rubber distributors, and those who are even interested in selling us pre-cut lengths want prohibitive prices.
I have been imagining some kind of simple machine where I load the coiled tubing on a spindle, then pull a crank that pulls a set length of tubing through some paired wheels, then slices the tubing with the final arc of the crank. Then the crank is released and pulled again for another piece. We have multiple lengths up to about 9 inches, so I would need to be able to easily reset the length of travel of the crank for these various parts.
Getting fancy, I see no reason why a stepper motor couldn't be hooked up to the same device to fully automate our rubber cutting. But that's a subject for another day. A simple hand-operated machine would be wonderful enough at this point.
Is anyone away of an off-the-shelf machine like this? Failing that, how would I go about getting someone to design and build one?
