Just another tape strip holder system

[Bas]

Hi all,

We all noticed that sticking those white paper and black plastic strip on your table with double sided tape isn't exactly the way to go. I tried these feeders:

http://liteplacer.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=399

They work pretty well, but still I have components jumping out of their pockets. Also there is only room for +/- 28 components for a 4mm pitch strip, not so much if you are planning to make a dozen PCB's or so.

Other issues:
- sometimes the protecting tape is under the holder and it breaks
- when removing this components are pulled out
- in my case, the spring wasn't strong enough to fix the tapes firmly.
- I prefer the exact same height as a PCB to improve accuracy

Also tried the screw-down type strip holders, but I found this also quite time consuming.

So I tried to design something different to make things easy. The concept is a simple holder without any moving parts. The grooves for the component tapes have angled sides, slightly smaller than the tapes. This way the tapes just stay in place. I decided to make them 200mm, for most strips 50 components. (I buy often in 50 or 100 pieces tapes) For the paper tapes, print this in black, for black plastic, use white or another color.

Paper tapes slides in very easy most of the time. Plastic tapes are sometimes hard to slide in, but I noticed that pressing them in from above and pulling them out when they are empty is also possible.

Hope this is useful for you. please feel free to try and improve!

Bas

[Bas]

For some reason stl files were not uploaded. Use these links if you want to download them:

STL files:
http://www.dexterlighting.nl/tapefeeder ... ersSTL.zip

Alibre CAD files (the CAD software I use)
http://www.dexterlighting.nl/tapefeeder ... ALIBRE.zip

Bas

[BrianJones]

I have used a variant of this type of holder.

I use 3D printed strips with the channel having parallel sides the exact width of the component tape.
They seem to be a tight fit for pulling tape through from one end, but it is also possible to push the component tape from the top.
Time will tell whether they wear with use.
3 strips each 250mm long take 9 hours to print on our Ultimaker 2 printer using its finest resolution.

I originally used blue as the channel colour so it would have enough contrast for both black and white tapes, but eventually just printed some in white.
For clear tape I just go over the component tape with a marker pen round the holes, before I remove the cover tape (which must be done with the component tape already in the holder)

I made a plywood reel holder so I didn't need to either cut the tape or have the reel getting tangled or trying to twist the component tape.

As a final step, I attached fridge magnet material to the back of the holder and put a 1.5mm steel sheet on the table, see photos.

Tape holders

tapeholders.jpg (528.98 KiB) Viewed 5618 times

reel mount

reel_mount.jpg (498.55 KiB) Viewed 5618 times

Steel Sheet

steel_sheet.jpg (518.26 KiB) Viewed 5618 times

Brian Jones

[ds23man]

For some reason stl files were not uploaded. Use these links if you want to download them:

STL files:
http://www.dexterlighting.nl/tapefeeder ... ersSTL.zip

Alibre CAD files (the CAD software I use)
http://www.dexterlighting.nl/tapefeeder ... ALIBRE.zip

Bas

Links do not work!