What about one motor driving a row of spindles via a toothed belt? The torque required is low so tooth engagement can be low. Maybe a small bearing to tension the back of the belt between each spindle. Just a thought.

edit : corrected a typo

 

What about one motor driving a row of spindles via a toothed belt? The torque required is low so tooth engagement can be low. Maybe a small bearing to tension the back of the belt between each spindle. Just a thought.

edit : corrected a typo

Perfect solution?!

Are you local to me, Norfolk UK?

Thanks!

 

Yep - near King's Lynn

 

Yep - near King's Lynn

Are you in a position to be able to work with me on this or would you even want to?

We can discuss it in more detail including fees etc in private if you like?

I have no idea how to share our personal contact details, as I'm new to forums!

 

You two can communicate via private message. Private messages can be initiated by any member with 10 or more posts.

 

You two can communicate via private message. Private messages can be initiated by any member with 10 or more posts.

Thank you, is that 10 posts in response to another members' topic, or does this reply count as 1 post?

 

I am impressed indeed! I was considering that driving a row of spindles with a common belt would be that way to go, but it still seems like that 35mm spacing will be too close. But drilling one array of holes on70mm centers and then shifting once to drill the other array seems reasonable. In addition, far less intensive on the drive portion of the system.
Please let us know how the final design works out!

 

So, I am in the same position - not enough posts to PM you yet. I can picture a "rack" of drills lowered by a hand operated lever with a limit switch to run the motor(s). The only electronics being motor speed control maybe. Unless you need the whole thing to be automated that needs programming which is not my field! I am into light engineering and hobby, analogue electronics.

 

Given that this project appears to be drilling such holes in an entire 48 x 96 inch sheet of unspecified foam material, it will benefit most from a bit of automation, or at least some scheme to assure getting it right with each individual step. Some sort of scheme to advance the desired 35mm between each row of holes drilled. And automating the step and drill sequence could be a great means to assure repeatability, even if an operator had to be pressing buttons for both the advance function and then the drill function, as I imagine that there is some rate of drill feed that is optimum for the quality of holes required.

 

Given that this project appears to be drilling such holes in an entire 48 x 96 inch sheet of unspecified foam material, it will benefit most from a bit of automation, or at least some scheme to assure getting it right with each individual step. Some sort of scheme to advance the desired 35mm....

Thanks for the input again!

Do you have any ideas on how this would be automated? As mentioned previously, these boards are currently drilled using CNC machinery, but it takes too long drilling one hole at a time.

Having a bank of drill heads attached to some kind of apparatus, driven via a single motor and a belt system seems to be a plausible way of making this work, but I can't think of how it would be automated.

 

The vertical motion to raise and lower the drill heads could either be a motor driving a leadscrew or an air cylinder with a flow control to hold a reasonable down speed. A gearmotor with a leadscrew and a variable speed drive would be adequate, with limit switches top and bottom to halt the motion. Moving to the next position for each row of holes could be as simple as a rachet mechanism set to advance one notch, set to 35mm, per revolution of a cam on another gear motor. Or it could be with another leadscrew advancing the table that the foam was on.
But a better method of advancing would be a mechanical indexer with a stop bar where a pin would drop into the next hole to stop the motion after 35mm of movement. That would require a bar with holes at 35mm intervals.
These are methods that could be done by skilled folks in a mechanical shop.
It is also possible to do it with a computer and position sensors and servo motors, but that would demand a lot of additional expertise and probably cost a lot more. I would do it with a PLC and air cylinders for the vertical motions, and a rack and pinion for the lateral move. I would use an encoder on the pinion drive and a counter in the PLC to control the distance of the move. That would be the cheapest scheme and much more easily adjustable. You would need a brake to prevent any table motion while drilling was being done. But that would require a PLC, which I would buy from Automation Direct, because the software to program their PLC devices is free.