Automatic Nori feeder

derek4real · Jun 25, 2011

garydan said:
I thought about patenting, decided not to go that route.

I'm using bulk nori sheets from the local asian market, cut it into strips and then use a couple drops of RODI water to glue the seams together. This wouldn't work with the crispier sheets. One area of concern i have is if you make 10-20 feet on a roll it would probably last a month. It's in the canopy and exposed to air, so it may dry out and break.

You could copyleft it, LOL

garydan · Jun 26, 2011

Gears on the way, tried driving it with an o-ring but putting enough pressure to keep the oring from slipping would twist it and bind it in the housing. I had some luck using a wide rubber band, but it would walk off of the shaft.

One concern with using a gear is the ability to manually feed it so you don't have to power it on in order to feed in a new roll. Also, i don't want to risk burning up the motor in the event the feeder becomes jambed.

I'm thinking i'm going to put a clutch on it. Basically, on the feed roller shaft end i'm going to sandwich the gear between a couple of felt washers and use a lock nut to adjust the pressure holding the gear on. I should be able compress it enough that i get a few inch lbs of torque before the motor starts slipping (the motor provides up to 9 in lbs). Leaving a manual feed knob on the other side of the shaft, i should be able to manually overpower the clutch for filling it.

I'll try to post some pictures next week when the gears arrive.

kybreos · Jun 26, 2011

You sir are a genius, I will pay $100 for one, a manual one is fine for me don't need a motorized one let me know when you work out the kinks. Pm me if your willing to sell me one.

patmack · Jun 26, 2011

Couldnt you put a fuse on the motor? If it becomes jammed the current will spike and the fuse should blow.

Fishkybizniz · Jun 27, 2011

Looks great! Probably want to keep it under wraps till you have full ownership of a patent but once you do, I would love to see a video posted on You tube showing it in action with your fish. I buy nori from the asian market and chop it into flakes myself as suggested in this thread. Also stated in this thread, if you introduce Nori flakes dry into the tank, it floats. For my tank, that means it all ends up in the return. This is one reason why I opted not to try putting it in an auto feeder. My other reason was concern it would absorb just enough evaporated moisture to gum it up which would end up over feeding the fish or not feeding them at all. Putting a sheet in clip didn't work well either. In my case, it all started off pretty good but as the stuff soaks, large pieces break off getting stuck on the intake, circulating pump or end in decor where my fish can't get to it. The best I've been able to manage is put my home made flakes into my pre made food cups. I put 5 squirts of Arti pods and a cube of shrimp, clam or plankton, teaspoon of nori flakes and one eye dropper of salt water into a food cup. I freeze the food cups and pull one out after each feeding to thaw in frig for the next feeding. Once the nori has soaked in the juices & water in the cup, the flakes stay submerged fluttering around in the tank just like the other food while the fish lap it up. Great solution but like wet food, my fish only get it if being manually fed. SOOO, will we all be seeing you pitch this on the show Shark Tank?

capecoral · Jul 4, 2011

I hope it works for you

LiquidShaneo · Jul 18, 2011

You aren't by chance open-sourcing this, are you? I have a 3D printer and this would be fun to print.

jimnrose · Jul 18, 2011

I seen a video on the 3D printer and still can't believe what I seen(reproducing a crescent wrench). When thedesign is completed it would be an excellent canditate.

LiquidShaneo · Jul 18, 2011

Here's the one I have: Makerbot Cupcake ( http://wiki.makerbot.com/start ). This DIY would be an excellent candidate for 3d printing parts.

garydan · Jul 18, 2011

I agree, this would be an excellent candidate for a makerbot.

I'm still debating where to go with it if/when we get it reliable. I'm thinking about making 10 or 20 to sell to see if we can fund the design/creation of it. See if it'll sell.

I've been meaning to post an update. We've remade it, this one is V2 (or V3 if you count the first one drawn up). We made a bunch of improvements to make it easier to build. I also have the motor in and have it automatically feeding.

One problem we did solve was the nori jamming occasionally on the sides, the feeder is now a bit wider and the spool has some sides to help keep it more centered. I successfully fed ~8' of nori without it jamming.

With V2 we tried to clean up and improve the feed slot, and introduced some problems. The grooves on the new one weren't deep enough, resulting in water wicking up between the groove and the algae and making it go up much further into the slot than V1 ever did. Also, we made the feed slot go deeper into the water, big mistake... We also made the slot narrower, trying to fix the problem where it would occasionally accordion up in the slot. The narrower, deeper slot with shallower grooves resulted in more wet nori in the slot getting stuck.

So, we're currently playing with different designs of feed slots, making the slots deeper and figuring out what a good width for the gap is. I'm also playing with some ideas for pumping air into just the slot by sealing the slot to the feed rollers. If that works, then i can get around the mushy nori problem completely.

Another possibility is to make the slot only go a tiny bit into the water. In V1 it went about 2.5" under the surface, V3 went ~3.5" in. I was trying to make it easier for the fish, but i think if i went with ~1" in the mushy nori problems would go away. I don't know how the fish will handle having to get that close to the surface. 2.5" wasn't a problem, making it deeper didn't fix any problems and only introduced problems, so I'm going to go back to that (or a little shallower) for the next revision of the slot. I'm also going to prop it up and see if 1" works.

My dad picked up some ocean nutrition red algae to prototype with. That stuff is super thin and when it gets wet it seems to be more positively buoyant than the green that i use from the asian market. Without pressurizing the slot i don't know if that will ever be feedable like this. If we can solve the problems with that though, i'm confident that the green nori will be reliable.

I'll try to post some pics of V2 in the next couple days.

LiquidShaneo · Jul 18, 2011

Try using Kickstarter if you need funds: http://www.kickstarter.com/start

RotaryGeek · Jul 18, 2011

This is awesome. I would go through and try to get a patent anyways, just cuz this is a very original idea that someone else will snatch up quickly.

LiquidShaneo · Aug 3, 2011

Any updates?

garydan · Aug 8, 2011

So, V2 had problems. We made the feed slot go deeper in the water, the grooves in the slots were shallower, and we moved the rollers up to the top of the frame to make loading it easier. These relatively minor changes to make it more convienient to make and use completely broke it. Shallower grooves made the nori stick too much, deeper portion under water incresed the amount of mush, and the extended portion above the water decreased the amount of force the rollers could put on the mushy nori to push it out of the bottom.

Take a strip of paper, grab up on it around 6 inches away from the edge, and see how much downward force you can apply. Now do it again at 2 inches way. That's basically what we're relying on to put force to push the under water portion out.

Below is V3.5. V3 fixed some of the V2 feed slot problems. With 3.5 I trimmed the bottom of the feeder off as far as i could to move the feed rollers as close to the water as possible to compensate for moving the rollers up. I then cut the slot off to only be around 1 inch into the water. This slot also has super deep grooves, so the nori has a lot less surface area touching. I also used my dremel polishing bits to polish up the inside of the slot. I just finished these revisions tonight, so i'm going to see how it does in the morning.

<iframe title ="Preview" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" frameborder="0" style="width:320px;height:239px;padding:0;background-color:#fcfcfc;" src="https://skydrive.live.com/embedphoto.aspx/Public/WP^_000011.jpg?cid=8c7d65758e653733&sc=photos"></iframe>

My dad has been incredibly helpful with this project. After talking with him on Thursday about the problems i was seeing, he made up V4 friday morning and already shipped it. v4 has the feed rollers all the way to the bottom of the frame. Having a 1 and a 3 year old, my time to make modifications is few and far between.

nrbelk · Aug 8, 2011

what about two sets of rollers that are powered by the same gears? One set below the water at the end of the contraption (the fish could eat all the way up to these rollers) and another set above the water.

The first set would do the work and pull the dry nori down, while the second send would serve more as a guide than anything else. Would that help?

garydan · Aug 8, 2011

The mush under water doesn't have enough structural integrity to handle going through rollers, it's roughly keeping it's shape in the slot but any force and it falls apart. Right now my only hope is to keep it loose in the slot and use the force from the dry stuff to nudge it down. It worked perfectly this morning after ~8 hours in the water, so i'm hopeful. I'm still keeping in mind a design where the feed slot is pressurized to keep it dry until it exits the slot and is eaten. I'm hoping i don't have to though.

Opcn · Aug 9, 2011

Ask the moderators to take this thread down and patent that sucker. You can sell the device reasonably cheap, and provide instructions for noori preparation, but also sell spools of prepared noori for a good markup.

garydan · Sep 13, 2011

Here's where we're at now. This is probably version 6 or 7, i think i've lost track.

SUCCESS!!! I loaded it up with 1 week of nori (two sheets). It went the whole week hands off. I just refilled it with 4 sheets tonight, going to see if i can go two weeks.

Here's the developments so far. We tried out using acrylic rod with a piece of tubing on the outside for the rollers. It didn't work, even the slightest bit of moisture and the nori would stick to it. So, we've moved back to nylon rod like what was used in the very first version. This is a FDA food grade nylon rod, so it should be safe. It seems that the non-stick surface of the nylon rod works the best for this.

Next, the humidity in the hood over night was softening the nori. It wasn't a lot, just a little, but it was enough to interfere. So, now it has a cover. I'm getting a lot of salt creep on the cover, but the nori is staying crispy and feeding reliably.

The feed slot just wasn't doing it, it'd turn mushy over night and then stick (sometimes) inside. It'd work for a day, sometimes two, and then jamb. Back to the drawing board there. All the slot was doing was keeping the nori from floating on the surface when it's first put in. Once it's wet, it sinks on it's own. Well, that can be accomplished other ways. I decided to try acrylic rods. It keeps it in place when needed, but open enough that the fish clean it up and keep it from getting jambed.

spc1spc1 · Sep 13, 2011

Opcn said:
Ask the moderators to take this thread down and patent that sucker. You can sell the device reasonably cheap, and provide instructions for noori preparation, but also sell spools of prepared noori for a good markup.

+1 you need to patent this.

EnderG60 · Sep 13, 2011

A few things...

What motor are you using currently?
how are you timing it?
can we get a parts list(with source if possible)?
whats the total cost of the unit so far?

also rather then that complicated clutch system, why not just put a momentary button on there to supply power to the motor and bypass the timer?

and lastly, why not mount the motor inside the housing? Seems like it would greatly extend the life of the unit to keep most of the working bits inside and away from humidity/salt.

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