11–20 of 34 posts
What is the mirrored plastic he mentions at the end? Sounds like the horror we have come to know as "glossy" computer monitors. Is it that awful fake chrome that looks like metal (and is called "chrome") until the consumer opens the package and realizes they've been conned?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR4S8Bqjmsg
you can see the simple mechanism used on a similar vibratory feeder in a US plant to separate zipper pulls facing in the wrong direction.
There are common tricks used with vibratory feeders to separate parts. That part is wider at one end than at the other, and has a big hole and a small hole. There are standard vibratory feeder tricks to separate them.
Custom vibratory feeder accessories, though, have to be designed and built, which may be beyond this small shop. They're making very low end zipper pulls, made of pot metal (zinc and aluminum) and casting them. Pot metal is really easy to cast, but too brittle for that part. Expect those zipper pulls to break. (There are many videos on YouTube on how to replace broken zipper pulls.) Better zipper pulls are stamped from sheet metal - plated steel, aluminum, brass.
The video is from a small shop that's barely surviving. It sucks making small parts like that, because your supplier and customer are both bigger than you and can squeeze you on price.
YKK, the world's largest zipper manufacturer, ("Small part, big difference") offers the same pull, with no alignment projection. YKK leads in the business because their zippers are better. There are tough engineering problems in zipper manufacturing. They don't talk about those. There are lots of exterior pictures of YKK plants on the web. There are no interior pictures.
At 3:32 into this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR4S8Bqjmsg you can see the simple mechanism used on a similar vibratory feeder in a US plant to separate zipper pulls facing in the wrong direction. There are common tricks used with vibratory feeders to separate parts. That part is wider at one end than at the other, and has a big hole and a small hole. There are standard vibratory feeder tricks to separate th…
The point as I see it is that price signalling is a frustratingly blunt instrument.
It's annoying that so much of our species' output is channeled towards activities that improve precisely nobody's lives. This is an artifact of how hard it is to communicate throughout the entire stack in our modern, globalized, decentralized capitalist economies.
That's the bit to let your engineering brain get hung up on. Not vibratory sorter optimizations.
The explanation above makes it sound like the pulls are getting re-oriented (flipped around) which is not what I see in the video.
I think a clearer explanation is this:
The pulls are aligned 50% tab-right (good) and 50% tab-left (bad) as they approach the feeder chain (or rail at the left as the OP calls it).
The tab-rights fit into slots in the feeder chain and proceed to the next assembly step.
The tab-lefts don't fit into the slots and simply drop away into the rotating pan below (from which they presumably return to the pot and make another attempt at the feeder later on).
> The tiny tab allows gravity to cause all the pullers to hang in the same direction as they fall into a rail toward the left. The explanation above makes it sound like the pulls are getting re-oriented (flipped around) which is not what I see in the video. I think a clearer explanation is this: The pulls are aligned 50% tab-right (good) and 50% tab-left (bad) as they approach the feeder chain (or rail at the left as…
> The tiny tab allows gravity to cause all the pullers to hang in the same direction as they fall into a rail toward the left. The explanation above makes it sound like the pulls are getting re-oriented (flipped around) which is not what I see in the video. I think a clearer explanation is this: The pulls are aligned 50% tab-right (good) and 50% tab-left (bad) as they approach the feeder chain (or rail at the left as…
This article isn't about zipper manufacturing. While the process of vibratory sorting is interesting, it's not the point Bunnie is making. The point as I see it is that price signalling is a frustratingly blunt instrument. It's annoying that so much of our species' output is channeled towards activities that improve precisely nobody's lives. This is an artifact of how hard it is to communicate throughout the entire s…
At 3:32 into this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR4S8Bqjmsg you can see the simple mechanism used on a similar vibratory feeder in a US plant to separate zipper pulls facing in the wrong direction. There are common tricks used with vibratory feeders to separate parts. That part is wider at one end than at the other, and has a big hole and a small hole. There are standard vibratory feeder tricks to separate th…
YKK's popular Vislon model has the tabs: http://www.ykkfastening.com/products/zipper/slider/zipper_ty... - yet other models from them do not (e.g. http://www.ykkfastening.com/products/zipper/slider/zipper_ty... ). I wonder why.