Home Made Case Annealer V2

[DiverDarrell]

I don't know what happened to my old account here, so this will be an epic first post for my new account. Many years ago I built a home made case annealer using help found in the forums here. Well needless to say it never really worked great as the geared down motors I got from china just would not hold a constant RPM and they really suffered at low RPMs. So now that I have retired from the USCG I have time to get back into long range, and reloading. And since I'm cheap, I'm trying to extend the life of my brass. I'll skip they why to or why not to anneal and get into the brass tacks of my version 2 case annealer.

So a few months ago I bought a 3d printer. I noticed that they use stepper motors for motion control. that got me thinking, could I use a stepper motor to solve my version 1 annealer issues. Digging into the internet I found that yes I could use a stepper motor to precisely control speed to very low RPM, but how. This lead me to discovering Arduino and their micro processing boards. It seemed that I could make an Arduino precisely control a stepper motor speed, as well as display the speed on an LCD screen.

Knowing that I know nothing about Arduino and Arduino programming, I ordered a starter kit from amazon, and with the help of youtube learned the basics. I made LEDs flash, flicker, dim and of course burn up. (if you cant catch the blue smoke and put it back, it will never work again) . I also purchased a adjustable power supply, nema 17 stepper motor, A4988 stepper motor controller, and an 16x2 LCD screen. with these parts I could figure out all the electrical design and programing for the V2 annealer.

After many hours of head scratching I was able to write a program that gave the stepper motor variable speed controlled by a knob, and display the speed in percentage of low to high speed. 1 - 100% on an LCD screen. It took many many hours for me to get this to work as I wanted. There was a lot of, "well lets just start over" but at last I was able to get it to work by cobbling other peoples coding and my coding together. I can't explain it all, but it works.

The Arduino board can be used for so much, and the board I have is an UNO revision 3, it is great for prototyping but I found I could get a Nano for about 7 bucks that does everything the UNO does and is much smaller. With this in mind I have used another program to layout my circuit design using this new board. Also incorporating a 12v power supply to feed the motor, and a voltage step down to feed the nano its 5v power. This will all get soldered onto a prototype PC board and placed into a 3d printed housing. the AA batteries in the photo are representing a 12v power supply.

Now I get to move onto the next step. designing a gear train to run the feeder and the drum off the one NEMA motor. I'll do the design work in fusion 360 cad (free for home use). My thought is to design a motor mount and directly attach a gear to the motor. and for the feeder and drum I'll design mounts that use skate board bearings (cheap) to reduce friction and gears to engage the motor gear. This will be too large to print all at once so I will incorporate line up tabs in the mounts so they lock into each other. And since I have some scrap aluminum around, I'll use that instead of wood this time. The form factor will be much much smaller than version 1 (what was I thinking). The LCD, Speed knob and power switch will all be in a printed housing on the front.

Now onto learning how to make gears in CAD, and also somehow getting all the parts design out of my head and into the computer. Fusion 360 is new to me and its a challenge at times. I'll be sure to update my progress as I continue on with this venture. First let me add a parts breakdown for cost reference.

1. Clone Arduino Nano......................................................................................$5.65
2. A4988 stepper motor driver ......................................................................$1.80
3. LM2596 adjustable step down buck power converter ....................$5.00
4. 5.5mm power plug, & switch ..................................................................$1.00
5. potentiometer & Capaciter.........................................................................$1.00
6. 12v power supply (wall wart) .....................................................................$10.00
7. 16x2 i2c lcd screen .........................................................................................$9.00
8. NEMA 17 stepper motor ..............................................................................$11.00

Total $44.45

Yes there is also cost in the aluminum, but its scrap from another project. I'm re using the cake pan from version 1 as well as the torch. also 3d print material will add a few dollars, but overall total cost should be around $100 bucks if you had to buy everything.

This has been a fun learning project and if I were to add up my time spent learning, it would be way cheaper to just buy a pre built. But the knowledge i have gained will greatly assist future projects.

END INITIAL POST: WILL UPDATE PROGRESS IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS

 

[DiverDarrell]

Since I'm not the best at using Fusion 360 CAD software, I usually try and rough sketch my ideas before I draft them in CAD. Also I'm no artist.

I've decided to use skate board bearings as they are cheap and I already have them. So what I have to design is 6 parts. X2 gears that fit an 8mm shaft, and one gear that fits the nema motor. These will be held on my grub/set screws. The nema motor mount to secure it to the face plate. X2 lower gear drive mounts ,x2 upper gear drive mounts, and the spacer for between the bearings. This spacer will lock onto the shaft woth set screws and ride the inner race of the bearings. This should give thrust support in both direction as the bearing will be locked into the mounts. The plan is to start with the NEMA motor mount. This will determine the height of the gear drive assemblies. One thing nice with 3d printing, is I can design in sockets that capture the nuts making assembly alot easier. Especially if you use square nuts. Since I already have an assortment of M3 sized hardware, it will be designed in metric. Which makes complete sense since my scopes are MRAD. I'm going to need to order a metric dial caliper so I can lessen all the conversions while I prototype. One last item I will integrate is keyed in spacers to space the gear drives off the motor mount. I'll make these last as I'll set up the system and get measurements with the gears meshed. Sure I could design it all in, but being new to gears, I'll add that step in last.

 

[DiverDarrell]

One thing I forgot to add into the programming is a start stop button. But this may be a good thing. Adding in programming really slows down the arduinos speed. And I need alot of speed to tell the motor to step. My motor is 200 steps per revolution and I'm running it at a half step configuration to smooth it out more at low speed, so I need to pulse the motor 400 times to make it go one revolution. In the programming I'm using micro seconds as my timing standard. 1 second equals a million micro seconds. Right now my slowest speed pulses once every 25,000 micro seconds and the high-speed is 1000 micro seconds. In reality this gives me a fast speed of 1 seconds per rotation to around 20 seconds per rotation. Plenty of time in the fire to anneal brass.

The arduino works on a loop. Right now it reads the dial to see if it has changed, calculates how long it's been since the last step and if it needs to step. Updates the LCD screen and repeats. If I were to add in a start and stop button it would also look to see if the switch was open or closed each cycle. And slows down the loop. But I can accomplish the start/stop through hardware, by putting a relay in and using it to control the 12v power going to the motor control board, doing the same thing but without affecting programming or loop speed.

 

[BuildingConceptsllc]

Yeah just do a switch or relay to do start stop and you are good. That's pretty cool. Would love to see a video of it in action. Well done

 

[DiverDarrell]

Yeah just do a switch or relay to do start stop and you are good. That's pretty cool. Would love to see a video of it in action. Well done

The relay adds $3.00 to the bill LoL. I could do it with just a switch, but a switch that could take the amp draw will cost more than the relay and have a limited lifespan. I do need to get this up and running, running out of new brass.

 

[Atomic_Lobster]

You could use a proximity switch right where the case sits waiting for the cake pan to turn
Once the case slips into the cake pan the feed motor spins another case to sit in front of the switch and it shuts off the feed motor

 

[DiverDarrell]

You could use a proximity switch right where the case sits waiting for the cake pan to turn
Once the case slips into the cake pan the feed motor spins another case to sit in front of the switch and it shuts off the feed motor

Thought about that, but it adds another motor to the set up. What I'm going for uses one motor and gears to connect it all together. I'll just time the two drop points 180 from each other. All the gears will be 1:1 so no timing creep to deal with. v3 will probably be an home brew induction set up, that will make use of proximity switches and solenoids. For now, I'm trying to keep it cheap, but consistent. My v1 came from others home brew setups I found on here many years ago before the web host shift.

I'd like to get back into service rifle match shooting now that I'm retired, hopefully in my, m1a, and m16 formats. I've become accustomed to batch processing and having a ready stockpile of brass ready for my auto loaders. But I just built up a beautiful Impact Precision action with a Bartlein 6.5CM barrel, with hopes of entering the long range game. And well this brass will be done in a smaller batch format, currently only have 200 Petersons srp cases to prep. I love reloading as it's a Hobby within a hobby, and now building my own gear is a hobby in a hobby in a hobby.

 

[DiverDarrell]

Well I have managed progress. I've got the mechanics all designed in CAD and have started to print the parts needed. I've also started to build the electronics board and getting wiring sorted. I still have to order a better potentiometer for speed control, the one i have used so far is more for prototyping. I need one that I can mount to the case. I still have to design the electronics case to make everything pretty and also the control case to hold the LCD screen, Speed knob, and power switches on the front of the annealer. But that should be pretty easy compared to designing the mechanical side. Life is going to get in the way for a few weeks as I go on vacation. Let me know what you guys think so far. Also I hope to share the parts list and the STL files, and the arduino programming file, that way if anyone else wants to build this system.

 

[BuildingConceptsllc]

That's pretty awesome. I have an idea I'd like to talk to you about sometime.

 

[txtaxman]

DiverDarrell said: I hope to share the parts list and the STL files, and the arduino programming file, that way if anyone else wants to build this system.

Darrell, I would like to see the parts list and the arduino programming file. Thanks.

 

[DiverDarrell]

Darrell, I would like to see the parts list and the arduino programming file. Thanks.

Absolutely, sorry for taking so long to reply. Just started a new job and times are hectic. I'll work on the parts list shortly as well as the arduino code. I did run into issues, the potentiometer didn't work out as it caused too much chaos in the step timing. I changed it to a rotery encoder, and it works better, not perfect though. The cheap encoders could work better.