After scouring the world and asking every prosumer CNC manufacturer questions they had never heard before, we eventually settled on the Shapoeko 5.1 pro from Carbide 3D which we were reassured by the extensive community, team and research could fit the bill.
Whilst successfully fitting our physical requirements, this machine was effectively a black box. This meant, when it came to integrating safety features, we had to create an external system that could determine different machine operation states and limit these to safe states of operation, or cut power if an unsafe state was detected.
The machine has passed quality control checks and is waiting to begin its first batch of 200 bins.
SMART Food Waste Bins Production Cell
For Limetrack, scaling production of their SMART wheelie bins has required switching between manufacturing technologies as production volumes have moved from early demonstrators, through small-batch volumes for trials, to larger production quantities for early adopters.
As part of this transition, with the help of MadeSmarter, Interactual were tasked with creating a production cell that could cut custom profiles onto the bottom face of your classic domestic wheelie bin. With this being a part of Limetrack's process of scaling up to be production ready with their fleet of SMART Food Waste Bins.
The cell had to be designed to handle long running times, varying bin configurations, changing bin cut-out profiles, tight cycle times, tight positional tolerances, swarf accumulation, operator safety, ergonomics, and, of course, as an interim requirement, be implemented at a very low CAPEX.
