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Super Glue Gun 10: Time to Rack and Roll -- Episode 319

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element14's The Ben Heck Show

Join the Ben Heck team every week for amazing hacks! Watch them build and mod community-inspired projects using electronics!

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Super Glue Gun
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In a previous episode, Ben and Karen worked on the auto stand mechanism only to discover they would need to redesign the entire upper portion of the gun.  In this episode, they take apart some Glue Guns to come with some ideas and Ben works on the redesign in Autodesk Fusion 360.

 

 

Karen takes apart a mod podge gun that they never really got around to looking at. After taking it apart, she discovers that the heating elements and loader tube are about the length they are looking for.  They’re trying to find a suitable heating element out of a glue gun.  If it can be found to exist then they can probably find it for manufacture.  The main thing this tells them is that they can actuate the glue far back and still get enough pressure to push it.  Their goal is to lengthen the gun so they have room for the auto stand.

Earlier they were talking about locating the actuator under the barrel of the gun, like some sort of servo. But having the actuator for the auto stand in that position adds bulk and you lose the feel they are going for with the gun.  Ben sketches up some ideas he has to get around this.

Ben gives an overhead view of his proposal for the auto stand.  There’s a continuous rotation servo inside of the trigger guard area, a laser cut gear to fit onto it, and that gear will mesh with a rack. In a rack and pinion, the pinion is the part that rotates the gear and the rack is a linear set of teeth that intersect with the gear. When the gear rotates, linear motion is created.

Ben fires up Autodesk 360 and continues working on the redesign.  Previously, he worked on a parametric extruder device that allows them to have account for variables, including the width of the glue stick and the distance, and parametrically change everything for them.  He’s able to keep that in his design but he goes back to having a quarter inch glue stick.

 

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  • in reply to f5kn

    That's a really good point. When trying to solve one problem, it's easy to forget a certain design consideration and end up creating a whole new problem. We'll see what we can do to get the drive motor close to the hot end, while keeping the nozzle narrow, have enough room for the auto-stand, and still utilize common glue sticks. Hmmm, we've got some work ahead of us.

  • Nice episode and discussion of the mechanics involved.

     

    DAB

  • There's one feature that it seems you guys might be forgetting about, that it's the retracting of glue sticks.

    If you put the motor too far back, or at least the Metal GearTm that pushes the glue stick through the hot tip, then you won't be able to retract the sticks once you release the trigger. And if the stick gets too short, going past the point where the gears are, it also won't work. You can push more, but you can't pull back the smaller one.

    So you might need either to put the motor closer to the tip, right in between the tip and the trigger guard (which of course would make it want to tip forward) OR have two sets of gears, one in the back to pull the sticks in, and another the closest to the hot tip as possible. One set could activate the other through a belt or cable.

     

    EDIT: OR... You could put the grip closer to the hot tip, motor still embedded in it.

    Or maybe one or two long archimedes' screws. Those could push the glue stick from very far in the back right to the hot tip.