Interesting Tech Projects
Jack the Ripper Bot I – Introduction
I had a problem.
Over the last 15 years my wife has amassed a huge DVD collection and we don’t have enough space for shelving to access them all. About a year and a half ago I decided to start ripping the discs to a media server. This went well initially but it was tedious. Ripping is a slow business and every hour I had to feed the computer another disc which was disruptive to normal life. I gave up.
Recently inspired and armed with a 3D printer I decided to build a robot to perform the disc changing. Jack the Ripper Bot was born.
View the video of the robot in action:Ā http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmHycIOtYHA
I will divide the description of Jack into five parts: introduction, mechanics, electronics, software and troubleshooting.
My aims were:
- Modular software and hardware design
- Open source
- Reliable
- Low cost
- Using off-the-shelf electronics
A stack of discs are placed into the “in tray”. An arm moves over to the stack and grabs the top disc. The disc is then lowered into the drive tray. Ripping takes place. Once complete the disc is removed from the drive tray and the arm takes it over to the “out tray” and places it there.
A Raspberry Pi is used to control the robot and a PC is used to control the overall process and the ripping.
I have a laptop which is about four years old and it can rip a DVD in about 1 hour 15 minutes. The in tray is designed to hold 24 discs to give about 28 hours of ripping time. It is of course possible to increase the capacity of the in tray and the out tray if your PC is faster than mine.
A complete bill of materials can be downloaded.
All files, including the software and part source files and STLs can be found on github. The files are licensed under GPLv3.
Print article | This entry was posted by Andy on September 3, 2013 at 11:58 am, and is filed under 3D Printing, Computer Aided Design. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |
Comments are closed.
about 11 years ago
Brilliantly simple. Love it
about 11 years ago
Any chance you can export the parts to STEP or IGES so that any 3d Cad software can open the files.
Also have you considered posting this on Thingiverse as Im sure it would go down well on there.
about 11 years ago
I don’t have the ability to export to any other formats, sorry. š The Alibre Design files are on github so it just requires someone with a Professional or Expert license to convert them.
It’s now posted on Thingiverse.
about 10 years ago
Witch model of DVD Drive do you use ?
I’ve got various type of internal dvd drive, but neither has a full tray opening.
Regards
about 10 years ago
LG GSA-H58N, manufactured December 2007.
about 9 years ago
Have you thought about doing this completely with the Raspberry Pi? You could use an USB to SATA adapter and rip to ISO. Saving files to a network share.
about 9 years ago
I didn’t think a RPi would have enough horsepower. I had a spare laptop so I used that instead. If you give it a try please post the setup and results!
about 9 years ago
I will try but 3D Printer not coming for a few months. I will be using a Raspberry PI B+ so will have 512mb memory. I may even try moving to a Blu Ray Reader. Would love to make it a DVD, CD and Blu Ray ripper.
I would like to make it really simple. Control from a web browser enter the network file location for ISO files give it count of disks and press start. you just get ISO files on network drive ready for handbrake to Convert to MP4.
about 9 years ago
Hello,
I search a product for ripping a lot of cd , I use dbpoweramp or itunes software,
I want to rip only ,100 or more different CD, automatically to my audio servers,
my need is just for cd ripping not for publish CD
I want to interface it with dbpoweramp or itunes
I want a simple and robust solutionā¦
Is your ripper bot is ok for this use ?
about 9 years ago
All information on my ripping bot is publicly available so you can make your own determination if it is suitable for your specific needs.
about 9 years ago
I really like your project, seems Mike a pretty easy method to rip the DVDs automatically but for me as a complete Linux and electronics noob i can’t rebuild the machine. I will probably be able to Print the parts out but then i have no idea about what to do next. Is there some Kind of how-to that can make it easier for people Like me to use your device?
about 9 years ago
@Jojo: The real brains of this operation is a Windows PC, although the RasPi runs Linux. If you’re having trouble with the Pi, which aspect is tripping you up?
about 8 years ago
I am interested in building my own Jack the Ripper. This is the first time I have done something like this. I am gathering the parts you have listed in your excel spreadsheet. However, I do not know how much plastic material I need to 3D print the plastic parts. Could you please give me an idea on how much plastic material I would need to purchase.
about 8 years ago
Not off-hand I don’t. I suggest: download the STLs, slice them with Slic3r then look at the gcode file with Notepad. Slic3r adds a comment towards the end that states how much filament is used.
about 8 years ago
Hello,
i try to assembly the Jack the Ripper Bot in FreeCAD (and in the next time print on my Vertex K8400), the only parts i’m missing are Core-Servo, Drive-Case/-Drive/-Tray, Toolhead-Servo, Toolhead-Microswitch, YAxis-Servo and YAxis-Microswitch as STEP/STL files.
Could you export and provide this in github or per mail?
about 8 years ago
Added to Github.