Mango classifier with laser cutter

What’s the project story ?

This project is the one of our final studying year. We are both mechanical engineer. We realized there was no machine to sort mangos with Camera technology. As it is a fruit mainly consumed in Mexico and we love it, we developed a solution to make more efficient and reliable the sort of our national fruit!

We thought to do it at low cost in a makerspace thanks to the experience of Josue who works as a teacher for Hacedores, another makerspace in Mexico city. We choose to do it in La Nave instead of Hacedores because beeing specialized in education content creation Hacedores has little time to help independent makers.

How the workshop was useful ?

La Nave was useful for its machines and its team. The prototype can be totally built in a makerspace. The structure thanks to the laser cutter as it is mainly made of wood. And some mechanisms with 3D printing technology. To control the proto we used a PLC, a tool widely used in industrial lines, and an Arduino controller. As very coding beginner, we learned by ourselves and have been helped by the lab team. Also, it is more spacious than Kevin’s garage in which we started the project

What’s the project’s greatest success so far ?

We passed over the “embuche” of the earthquake of 2017 that broke some pieces.

What’s your greatest failure(s) & lesson(s) so far ?

If we would have changed something it would have been our organization. We built parts and started coding without any plan, time schedule. Then, we probably won’t use a PLC as its far much too complicated for such a project. Use an Arduino only is a good thing. So in a way, think simple first then improve it. Don’t waste time to think in a very sophisticated manner.

What’s your vision for the project & next steps ?

We will share the project in open source with a tutorial so that anyone could improve it and use it for other kinds of product.