FingerBlaster

More progress has been made. Made slight tweaks to the mechanical design a little, might be time consuming to print everything vs using the same concept and making it out of more traditional materials n less time, but i'm sticking with it since I don't have the tools right now to actually do otherwise.. I made the design as a parametric model with most of the key dimensions being variables in fusion360, so it'll be easy to resize for different calibers by plugging in numbers with minimal cleanup to the model. I hope to have the printer ready and set up by the end of next week to start testing prints that weekend. As far as the code goes, i didn't re-use the existing code that jakgut made and wrote my own. His is probably superior to mine, however as i'm learning ML I found it easier to take that route than try to edit his. However I did decide to start with a similar design to his using tensoflow and the keras api. I did a test model with 3 types of brass, FC, FCNT and WIN. Winchester was 100% successfully identified, FC was 100% successfuly identified, however FCNT was sometimes miscategorized as FC. Hopefully I'll be able to put a little more time into it and make some more progress this weekend. I'm going to start simple and redo the images I took because once i started working with them i realized that I made some mistakes in taking them. I'm currently running the test code in google colab so I have no idea how it will actually perform on a raspi. Once i have a working prototype i'll post the code and the fusion360 files for the community.

I've been making some pretty good progress in Fusion360 with a design i like for the sorting. Inspired by this skittle sorter using gravity to do all the work. Should be pretty quick if it works right. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL0VvoQ6kww My plan is to have each gate as a module that you 3d print and assemble and then stack as many on top of each other as headstamps as you want to sort. Each module having a port coming off of it that you can put a tube on that leads to a bucket. Practically the number of calibers you can sort would be limited by height if it works right. It'll be another 2-3 weeks before my 3d printer is set up so i can print these out and see how they need to be fixed/improved, because you know it never works right the first time. I'm sure all the dimensions are wrong brass will jam up, get stuck and will need to be tweaked. I've been working conceptually on the code side of things, have some pretty solid ideas, but i need to get a good dataset ready for training testing. The circle light i ordered off of amazon arrived today and it won't work as well ad i'd hoped (too big and not concentrating enough light on the head stamp), so exchanging it for another one. The more variables that can be eliminated/controlled the better the accuracy will be and the easier it will be to train.

Thank you! I joined up.

Can you send me an invite?

I'm the guy who originally started this thread. Life got in the way and I forgot all about it, I've moved twice, started a business... And i've come full circle back here. I rediscovered this thread thinking about tackling this problem again. Very cool to see some of you have run with it and there's even a code sample! I also hadn't been reloading much due to how cheap ammo was and how busy I've been, now i have multiple 5 gallon pails full of brass that it's time to sort. I've started sketching up some ideas for sorting mechanisms in fusion360 to 3d print once i get my printer up and running by next month I hope. So far i don't like any of the ideas I've come up with. Also messing around with some Computer Vision/Deep Learning frameworks which are honestly a bit above my paygrade at the moment. Been playing around with both darknet/yolo and opencv and got some stuff that is a start going, but still needs a lot of work. I'm going to look at the code Jakogut posted during my next bit of significant free time to see what I can learn. My goal is to have something that will run off a single board computer like an Nvidia Jetson and a web interface, and not need a laptop plugged in to run it. Hopefully in the next week or two I will find the time to make a jig to take consistent photos of 9mm brass. i'm thinking of taking around 100 each of 4 different head-stamps. Train an some code with half of the images and with a little luck get it to properly identify the other half of the images. I've got this little arducam right now that i'm using to toy with: https://www.arducam.com/product/arducam-8mp-1080p-usb-autofocus-camera-module-1-4-cmos-imx219-mini-uvc-usb2-0-webcam-board-with-1m-usb-cable-for-windows-linux-android-and-mac-os-b0292/

I know i've seen someone who has done this before , i was thinking maybe @jmorris but i might only be thinking him because he's done so much cool stuff around here. I'm sure anything i DIY will be slow, cumbersome and complex. But sorting brass by headstamp is just soo tedious. The issue is the range i buy brass from has started using federal NT... and with the different size flash hole it's basically a necessity.

I'd like to try and make something to do this. I recall having seen a post somewhere where someone did this, but can't find it. I think they used a cognex camera, but I don't know where to start with the software. I can do basic Arduino and Ras pi programming. Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

so is an sp-01 with a czc a bushing legal?

I tried searching but search function in tapatalk seems kind of janky. I think it's legal from what I've heard, but want to confirm. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

It seems like they are crazy busy right now, but I got in touch with Stuart and put some wheels in motion on 3 pistols. Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

Thank you Stuart, i sent you an email last night.

Want to place an order

i've sent them 2 emails and have been calling for 3 days and it just keeps going to an answering machine. Anyone know what's up?

i'm going to be doing some extensive night shooting and want to do some loads with low muzzle flash. I'm not needing to make power factor this will just be a 6 day night training class, but i don't want powder puff loads either. I'd be bringing a 9mm and 45 with me and shooting 124 gr and 230 gr pills. I'm thinking be86 or ramshot silhouette? What would you use? thoughts?

holy shit snacks that's a lot of brass....

That's stupid simple great idea i love it... is that a harbor frieght mixer?

I've always seated and crimped pistol in 2 stations using the lee FCD on my 1050. Now that i have a mr bullet feeder, i'm thinking about giving a hornady seat/crimp combo die i have laying around a try so i can retain my powder check die. I've never used a combo seat/crimp die, how are they? I'm reloading mixed head stamp brass. Or am i better off using 2 stations and losing the powder check die? I was thinking about rigging up one of those cameras i see people use.

I thought about a cement mixer, but you can't really put pins in the cement mixer. I would think they would all just stay at the bottom of the mixer unless you tilt it horizontal. If you do that everything will come out. Not sure how to make a watertight lid.

I heard about polishing the powder measure to increase throw consistency, but looking through old posts i don't see many recent mentions of it. I also read that the powder measures now have some parts coated in teflon from dillon? So this might actually not be as good of an idea as it once was?

So i've got pistol brass and military rifle brass by the 5 gallon bucket. I have a bigdawg tumbler that i bought years ago that's just not big enough to keep up anymore. Any suggestions for tumbling brass by the 5 gallon bucket without breaking the bank but i can still do wet and with SS pins?

one of the ranges i shoot at has the big ammo up, with the rotating drum.. on hard surfaces that one works amazingly well... i can't speak for any of the other models... i've looked at the hand held ones, but i've always read mixed reviews, esp on non hard surfaces that it just doesn't seem worth the price/effort.

i use the shock bottle 100 round... i wish they made it for all the calibers i shoot.