Arduino conveyor w/ light sensor

Development Boards Arduino
1

Hi all,

I’m looking to utilize an Arduino board and some accessories to make a conveyor. I realize the majority of the mechanical parts I’ll have to fabricate (this is for work and we have a machine shop, so not a problem), but I’m curious what parts are recommended.

The idea is:

~2ft X 3ft conveyor belt

Just needs to catch parts falling off of another conveyor and pull them away from that belt.

No min speed

I’d like to use a sensor to turn the motor on when a part approaches, and have the conveyor run until the part is maybe 1 ft from where it started. Precision is not important, so I think simply putting the motor on a timer may be sufficient as apposed to having another sensor.

I would think the parts needed would be the board, a power supply, a motor or two, and a few sensors. I’d like to be able to have a range of about 1ft wide for the sensor to detect parts coming off of the original conveyor as they don’t always go straight.

For a few senior engineering design projects my classmates used Arduino and I have a little programming ability, so I think this is feasible…no? The parts only weigh < 1lb. I’m not familiar with what motors are mateable to these boards. I believe I’ve seen some light sensors around, and I’m not sure which is optimal.

Thanks in advance!

2

I’m not sure how your primary conveyor is being controlled but we usually have ours tied back to a plc for control and e-stop control. Generally you can add I/O blocks to the plc and upload some new code.

If you could give us some more info on how the primary conveyor is being controlled that would help.

The Arduino is completely capable of handling this but you are going to need a motor controller and a motor capable of moving the conveyor, and some sensors.

  • Sal
3

http://www.arcfn.com/2010/03/detecting- … no-ir.html

Use TSOP4038, TSOP58038 or an equivalent fixed-gain IR receiver (a common receiver used with remote controls is not preferred as they require “off” periods in the signal). ~$1. Instead of an IR led you can use a decently bright 20ma red LED so you can see the beam. That should give you four feet of distance easily.

To switch the motor on/off it would be simplest to just use a [relay. You’re only moving the conveyor in one direction so a motor controller would be overkill.](http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/electronic-brick-5v-relay-module-digital-p-479.html?cPath=156_160)