Has anyone built a keycap sorting machine?

[bearcat]

After seeing tjcaustin's sorting methods and his mention that they all suck, it made me wonder...  why not make an automatic keycap sorting machine?

A little openCV, a little lego-conveyor belt... Should be pretty manageable, right?  Anybody made a go at it?

[CPTBadAss]

I've never heard of such a thing but I think Lego Mindstorms would be an amazing solution to this problem. What's openCV?

[xavierblak]

I had a similar thought as you when I saw the sorting pics from the raindrop gb.

One thing I'm not clear on is do the key come from the manufacturer pre-sorted by key type (ie do you get a bag of tab keys and a bag of each alpha key?) Looking at the pile of keys from the raindrop GB it looks like that's how the came, but it's hard to tell and they may do it differently each time. But if that is the case it would make it easier because then you don't need the machine to figure out what key is what, you just need it to feed it keys and have it create sets.

[jdcarpe]

Someone made a keycap sorting machine. I've seen it in action.

It took many years to build, and it's called an aggiejy.

[aggiejy]

Hahaha!

Bearcat... are you sure you're not talking about me?  I posted 3 different sorting methods I used, and said they all sucked.  I think tjaustin gets his all presorted like a smart man.  (Just have to sort into packages, which is comparatively drop dead simple.)

[aggiejy]

I had a similar thought as you when I saw the sorting pics from the raindrop gb.

One thing I'm not clear on is do the key come from the manufacturer pre-sorted by key type (ie do you get a bag of tab keys and a bag of each alpha key?) Looking at the pile of keys from the raindrop GB it looks like that's how the came, but it's hard to tell and they may do it differently each time. But if that is the case it would make it easier because then you don't need the machine to figure out what key is what, you just need it to feed it keys and have it create sets.

Yes, they come sorted by key.  So you have a big back of "A", "B", etc.  I'd imagine the effort to build a machine to do it would be more than the effort to do it by hand.  (Unless perhaps you were the manufacturer...)

[xavierblak]

Yes, they come sorted by key.  So you have a big back of "A", "B", etc.  I'd imagine the effort to build a machine to do it would be more than the effort to do it by hand.  (Unless perhaps you were the manufacturer...)

Oh I'm sure it would be more work building a sorter for one group buy. But it's a type of problem that programmers/engineers like to think about because if you solve it once it could be reused over and over again. Of course in our case with different people running GBs it wouldn't be a huge help.

[Tym]

Yes, they come sorted by key.  So you have a big back of "A", "B", etc.  I'd imagine the effort to build a machine to do it would be more than the effort to do it by hand.  (Unless perhaps you were the manufacturer...)

Oh I'm sure it would be more work building a sorter for one group buy. But it's a type of problem that programmers/engineers like to think about because if you solve it once it could be reused over and over again. Of course in our case with different people running GBs it wouldn't be a huge help.

Post it?

[xavierblak]

Post it?

Post what?

[Tym]

Post it?

Post what?

The machine.

[Krogenar]

Just as an exercise... what ways could you use to sort keycaps? Weight? Shape? How does a company like GMK or SP handle this? I'm sure they don't have people in rooms putting one keycap at a time into bags? Do they? Or is that an issue for the end consumer to handle? Do they send these keycaps out to major keyboard manufacturers as described earlier -- a bag of 'A', a bag of 'B', etc.

I always imagined that they injected a mold that encompassed an entire keyboard set, and then de-sprued that finished molding, and then all the keys were polished, etc -- but they traveled together, perhaps?

A keycap sorting machine... I see a conveyor belt with a weight sensor, and/or an optical scanner w/OCR of some kind. The weight might limit the possibilities, then the OCR determine which cap you're looking at, and diverts to the proper hamper. OR, a sweatshop. Either one. Second one is likely cheaper and easier to set up.

[SpAmRaY]

Just as an exercise... what ways could you use to sort keycaps? Weight? Shape? How does a company like GMK or SP handle this? I'm sure they don't have people in rooms putting one keycap at a time into bags? Do they? Or is that an issue for the end consumer to handle? Do they send these keycaps out to major keyboard manufacturers as described earlier -- a bag of 'A', a bag of 'B', etc.

I always imagined that they injected a mold that encompassed an entire keyboard set, and then de-sprued that finished molding, and then all the keys were polished, etc -- but they traveled together, perhaps?

A keycap sorting machine... I see a conveyor belt with a weight sensor, and/or an optical scanner w/OCR of some kind. The weight might limit the possibilities, then the OCR determine which cap you're looking at, and diverts to the proper hamper. OR, a sweatshop. Either one. Second one is likely cheaper and easier to set up.

I think we need someone on the inside to do a video tour so we can how all our glorious keycaps are made. (I'm assuming this hasn't already been done.)

I'm curious also though because I've noticed on some keys they actually have small holes from manufacturing, while others have a small divet and some no marks at all.

[aggiejy]

There were some videos of SP making them a while back.  At least the machine in the video seemed to be making 2 (or maybe 4, I forget) keys at a time.  I don't know if they are the same legend or different.  Either way, I think at least SP is hand-sorting... they charge $0.05 PER KEY to get them presorted.  I'd imagine if they automated it, they might be a bit more competitive on that, but who knows.

As far as how to do it... this is a good question.  Set size can vary quite a bit.  You may have an alpha set, a mod set, a numpad set, etc.  Then, each set may have a variable number of qty.  So if you have 40 key caps in a set, 200 sets... that's a complicated machine no mater how I can imagine it.

[aggiejy]

Ah!  Here you go.

It's a very manual process compared to what I had in my head.  Which is why we pay $50-80 a set at cost vs $10 or something if they were typical massed produced plastic pieces.

[Tym]

Someone build something like this ?

[JPG]

I just found the answer. Quite simple and obvious too.

They have an ARMY of those, see for yourself!

More

[aggiejy]

Someone build something like this ?

More

But you'd have to have 300 little cups at the bottom or something.

[Tym]

Someone build something like this ?

More

But you'd have to have 300 little cups at the bottom or something.

Im sure if someone built it all GB's could be shipped to them for less than 5c a key sorting fee ?

[i3oilermaker]

Were not trying to take a set of jumbled keys and sort them out.  That part is done. 

We need the opposite of that machine, one that takes one of each color M&M and puts it in a bag

[i3oilermaker]

I envision it as a machine that you pour a bag of ESC keys into, and the thing has like 20 chutes with bags at the end.  If the machine could send one key down each chute, you could just let it run for each key and boom 20 sets.

[Tym]

Same sort of idea, just upside-down ?

[aggiejy]

Yep, the problem comes with the number of sets I guess.  If you could build a system to dispense one keycap at a time from a bunch poured in, that would get you started.  Then under that, have a conveyer belt with bins (or cups) on it.  The system drops a cap, advances, drops a cap, advances.  At the end, you put in a different bag of caps from the set and it works its way backwards.  Human effort then is just setup of the bins and pouring a bag at a time.

The problem like I mentioned before is if you are sorting 200+ sets, that's a long conveyer belt to hold all the bins.  (It could be circular or a really long line.) 

You could reverse this plan by having a dispensing machine for each keycap instead, and basically fill up one set at a time. But you'd have to have at least as many dispensing machines as you had caps in a set, and I imagine that would cost more and is more complex.

As far as the hypothetical dispensing machine, it would have to be able to handle all of the odd shapes, sizes, and profiles of the key caps.  (I can tell you from experience that they somehow get tangled together!)

[aggiejy]

I envision it as a machine that you pour a bag of ESC keys into, and the thing has like 20 chutes with bags at the end.  If the machine could send one key down each chute, you could just let it run for each key and boom 20 sets.

Yep, you could limit the number of sets it does in a pass... which is basically what I was doing at first.  But I found that the time to open a big bag of keys and close it added quite a bit of work and overhead.  I was originally doing 22 sets at a time.  This was slooooow.  I upped it to 30+ (in the chair-spinning-technique).  That was still slow, so I moved to the string system with plastic bags... this allowed me to finish a complete bag of a legend in one pass.  It was faster, but the bags were too small and close together to be accurate.  Thus, I ended with plastic cups because you could add as many as you need and they were big enough to drop into accurately.

Regardless, trust me... sorting keycaps for a week manually, all of the different machine options went through my head.   There are plenty of ways to do it if you really wanted to.

[SpAmRaY]

Ah!  Here you go.

It's a very manual process compared to what I had in my head.  Which is why we pay $50-80 a set at cost vs $10 or something if they were typical massed produced plastic pieces.

Thank you for sharing this!

[mkawa]

Were not trying to take a set of jumbled keys and sort them out.  That part is done. 

We need the opposite of that machine, one that takes one of each color M&M and puts it in a bag

this is not that hard to build, but it's definitely a project, and it will be very large. basically you have 87 vats, and you empty out a bag into each vat. at the end of each vat is a device that lets exactly one "unit" out per cycle. run the machines in synch and ta-da! the two problems you need to solve are:

where do you find the space to put such a machine
how do you let exactly one unit out per cycle?

1) just requires money i think. rent an industrial space somewhere.

2) chute + gate + optical sensor. open the gate and snap it shut when the optical sensor fires. then, weigh what came out. you'll either have 0, 1, or more units, easy to discretize the weights. if you have non-1 units, dump what you exhausted into a refuse bin to be recycled and cycle again. if you have 1 unit, dump your output into the set and give the all-clear. all units proceed to the next cycle if and only if all units give the all-clear.

[Tym]

Were not trying to take a set of jumbled keys and sort them out.  That part is done. 

We need the opposite of that machine, one that takes one of each color M&M and puts it in a bag

this is not that hard to build, but it's definitely a project, and it will be very large. basically you have 87 vats, and you empty out a bag into each vat. at the end of each vat is a device that lets exactly one "unit" out per cycle. run the machines in synch and ta-da! the two problems you need to solve are:

where do you find the space to put such a machine
how do you let exactly one unit out per cycle?

1) just requires money i think. rent an industrial space somewhere.

2) chute + gate + optical sensor. open the gate and snap it shut when the optical sensor fires. then, weigh what came out. you'll either have 0, 1, or more units, easy to discretize the weights. if you have non-1 units, dump what you exhausted into a refuse bin to be recycled and cycle again. if you have 1 unit, dump your output into the set and give the all-clear. all units proceed to the next cycle if and only if all units give the all-clear.

Or we buy a Big Rig, but the whole lot in a container and keep it moving around Gotham city so they can never track it (along with 2 other identical vehicles) but in reality, awh

[Krogenar]

Gentlemen, no! NO NO NO!

The best sorting machine is simple: powered by beer and pizza -- sorting party wins out.

[mkawa]

meetups are an order of magnitude more fun when you don't have a few million keys to sort, unfortunately.

[i3oilermaker]

I'm going to necro this thread to gather new ideas....

I have had the most success with the "Solo Cup" technique, but there has got to be room for improvement.

I was thinking a "hopper" of sorts could make it faster to pour in a bag of a certain letter and shoot a key into each cup...

[Krogenar]

I'm all for revivifying the thread!

I imagine keeping the human being at the center of whatever infernal sorting machine is made. I think the Solo cup setup is the simplest, except that you need a lot of cups. Putting the cups on lazy susan sort of rotating ring would make it a lot easier. There's got to be a POP display of some kind that would be close enough without being very expensive. If I had to sort a lot of keycaps, I think this is how I would do it.

Some quick images I found using keywords "carousel POP floorstand"




I just imagine those SOLO cups in the first and second tiers, sitting in front of them, and tossing the keycaps into labeled SOLO cups, spinning them around as needed. It's not a Star Trek solution, but it might be an improvement over a floor- or table-based matrix of cups.

EDIT: Ok, some of these things could be expensive, but it's not a very complex machine. It should be possible to jury-rig something similar.

[Krogenar]

Ok, here's one: pricey, but they're out there.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Spinning-Carousel-Sunglass-Eye-Pedestal-Floor-Display-Unit-/190752146207?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c69b6c31f

Maybe a magazine rack, rotating display could be used with envelopes in place of magazines?

[AcidFire]

We've actually got something here in the office that I plan to use for doing the counting of blank sets.

Basically, the way it works is this:
- Item is dumped into a vib bowl at the top of the unit. through some adjustable peices, they eventually end up in a single row.
- They pass through an optical sensor. The sensor on our device has to be trained to the size & shape of what you're counting. Once you've done that the profile can be stored for later use.
- Once it's been trained, you set the size & number of sets your counting. When you start the machine, it pushes the items through, until it's reached the number it's been set to, and then pauses. You push a button, it fills the bag/cup/pill bottle your using for storage, and then starts counting the next batch.

[Thimplum]

We've actually got something here in the office that I plan to use for doing the counting of blank sets.

Basically, the way it works is this:
- Item is dumped into a vib bowl at the top of the unit. through some adjustable peices, they eventually end up in a single row.
- They pass through an optical sensor. The sensor on our device has to be trained to the size & shape of what you're counting. Once you've done that the profile can be stored for later use.
- Once it's been trained, you set the size & number of sets your counting. When you start the machine, it pushes the items through, until it's reached the number it's been set to, and then pauses. You push a button, it fills the bag/cup/pill bottle your using for storage, and then starts counting the next batch.

Lemme guess...

You made it with a laser cutter?

[AcidFire]

LOL no, but we have made several accessories for it on the laser
My boss found a fantastic deal on it, and I believe we aquired it for roughly 10K or so. Not a small chunk of change, but when it's saved us countless man hours at this point, it's earned it's title in the office off being one of the most useful purchases we've ever made. I'll see if I can shoot a quick video of it in action today or tomorrow.

[Thimplum]

LOL no, but we have made several accessories for it on the laser
My boss found a fantastic deal on it, and I believe we aquired it for roughly 10K or so. Not a small chunk of change, but when it's saved us countless man hours at this point, it's earned it's title in the office off being one of the most useful purchases we've ever made. I'll see if I can shoot a quick video of it in action today or tomorrow.

That would be great.

[AcidFire]

As promised:

[Thimplum]

As promised:

THAT IS AWESOME!

[kmiller8]

Menial tasks... isn't that what these are for?

[SpAmRaY]

Menial tasks... isn't that what these are for?

Show Image

we already determined we don't want anyone eating keycaps :P

[mkawa]

LOL no, but we have made several accessories for it on the laser
My boss found a fantastic deal on it, and I believe we aquired it for roughly 10K or so. Not a small chunk of change, but when it's saved us countless man hours at this point, it's earned it's title in the office off being one of the most useful purchases we've ever made. I'll see if I can shoot a quick video of it in action today or tomorrow.

i have talked to someone looking at making medium scale versions of these kinds of devices and described our problem to them. basically these kinds of machines are not actually that hard to make. you just design a workflow and then build a small machine that handles each piece of workflow to your desired tolerance. one of the reasons they cost so much right now is that they have to be made either with a machined metal or tooled up polymers. the guy i talked to also happens to be big in the hobbyist 3d printing community.

you can see where this going.

if we can imagine the machine we want and then start drawings of each individual piece, we can totally do this, and cut the cost (and probably the bandwidth) of the machine by an order of magnitude. however, i think this kind of machine is complicated enough that we need quite a few engineers to be drawing and fabricating parts. the support of this other fellow will help, but i don't even think he can design the thing himself, frankly.

[CPTBadAss]

Why can't we use Lego Mindstorms to do this? I made a marble sorter when I was in high school. Couldn't we do the same with a keycap?

[AcidFire]

Round objects are much simplier to design machines like this for since their shape + gravity makes them easy to move, and to make things that can move them as well. I've been thinking about this since I came across this thread and I might have a solution that while not perfect, could be a step in the right direction. We're also getting a kit in september where I work that I'm going to look at converting to a visually based sorting system, but only after I've gotten my modular keyboard project finished.

[Tym]

The only problem would be the size, and mobility.  Could the owner of the machine be a key cap sorting and packaging *company*? So SP would generally ship to them, they charge a fee to the GB participants and do the sorting and shipping in a shorter time frame.

[SpAmRaY]

The only problem would be the size, and mobility.  Could the owner of the machine be a key cap sorting and packaging *company*? So SP would generally ship to them, they charge a fee to the GB participants and do the sorting and shipping in a shorter time frame.

I think SP will sort for a fee already....

[Krogenar]

The only problem would be the size, and mobility.  Could the owner of the machine be a key cap sorting and packaging *company*? So SP would generally ship to them, they charge a fee to the GB participants and do the sorting and shipping in a shorter time frame.

My question has always been: what does SP do? If they get a huge order, what do they do -- hire some temp workers and put them at the edge of a circular conveyor belt and have them manually sort? It's either that, or they have a machine. But if they hand sort, then I would guess there hasn't been a machine yet made to sort keycaps.

[AcidFire]

The only problem would be the size, and mobility.  Could the owner of the machine be a key cap sorting and packaging *company*? So SP would generally ship to them, they charge a fee to the GB participants and do the sorting and shipping in a shorter time frame.

I don't see why not. It all depends on the system and the complexity of the sorting I think. If you were only counting out blank caps, there's more options for you and they'll tend to be cheaper. Anything that would have legends would have to optically recognized to be sorted.

I have something like this in mind:

[JPG]

But even if we have this super sorting machine (the one Acidfire use at job), how will you manage to know that you have a "K" and not an "A" (for example) since they both have the same size. If you put all the keys together, you need to get one of each in each bag instead of a number X of the same item. The problem seems really different to me unless I missed something big!

What would be nice is to have a big cone (pointing down) and with a lot of containers all around the big circle at the top of the cone. In each container you put all the keys from 1 specific key (so one container for the letter A, one for the letter B, etc.) and then you have a big button that, when you press it, lets 1 key from each container drop in the middle of the cone, and at the base of the cone you have a bag where the keys drop. So basically, you push the button, 1 key of each drops in the bag, you close the bag and put a new one.

The problem is that you will need as many containers as there are keys, and as many opening system as there are containers, unless you make one with like X number of containers and you do you bags with X keys at a time, them once you sorted all the keys from the X containers, you start again with X different keys, putting the bags with the previous keys again.

And then not all the keys are the same size, so you need a different opening for each size.

[AcidFire]

But even if we have this super sorting machine (the one Acidfire use at job), how will you manage to know that you have a "K" and not an "A" (for example) since they both have the same size. If you put all the keys together, you need to get one of each in each bag instead of a number X of the same item. The problem seems really different to me unless I missed something big!

What would be nice is to have a big cone (pointing down) and with a lot of containers all around the big circle at the top of the cone. In each container you put all the keys from 1 specific key (so one container for the letter A, one for the letter B, etc.) and then you have a big button that, when you press it, lets 1 key from each container drop in the middle of the cone, and at the base of the cone you have a bag where the keys drop. So basically, you push the button, 1 key of each drops in the bag, you close the bag and put a new one.

The problem is that you will need as many containers as there are keys, and as many opening system as there are containers, unless you make one with like X number of containers and you do you bags with X keys at a time, them once you sorted all the keys from the X containers, you start again with X different keys, putting the bags with the previous keys again.

And then not all the keys are the same size, so you need a different opening for each size.

What I have in mind would work like this, but wouldn't need to handle all the keys at once. Basically, you have a rail full of each key you need. a 2m long rail could hold 101 sets worth if we're talking about legended keys. Then you've got a machine that say handle 10 to 20 rails at a time, so you do them in batches. Once you've finished all the letters, you move onto the numbers, then functions, etc etc, all funneling into the same bag/cup/whatever you're using, until you've sorted it all. I have a design for something like this in my head, I just need some free time (what's that?) to actually put it together.

[Tym]

@Spam the problem with SP is that they charge an exorbitant amount like 5cents a cap I think which is understandable if you have to employ someone to do it by hand.

[mkawa]

The only problem would be the size, and mobility.  Could the owner of the machine be a key cap sorting and packaging *company*? So SP would generally ship to them, they charge a fee to the GB participants and do the sorting and shipping in a shorter time frame.

the person i am talking to has a warehouse and does fulfillment for his own stock. he is interested in building specialized fulfillment machines to do medium scale fulfillment for organizations and companies who have bursty or weird fulfillment needs but can't justify a dedicated ff building