ReelMag - An easier way to store and organize your SMD components

[r_karthik_r]

Hello Everyone,

Using SMD components for prototypes, hobby projects small batch production is all cumbersome and difficult but unavoidable. If you are into it, There is a High probability you would end up with bix boxes of ESD and component packets



This resulted in

⛔Delayed projects
⛔Searching for components
⛔No track of stock
⛔creates a mess while soldering

🎉Introducing ReelMag🎉. The Revolutionary way to store and organize SMD components







Grab the limited-time offer to get a free ReelMag!! Check www.reelmag.store
Follow us on Instagram for regular updates as we launch - https://www.instagram.com/reelmag.store/



We are planning for a Kickstarter launch soon! Comments and questions are most welcome.

[PlainName]

Interesting and potentially cool. Of course, when one requires quite a few of those the price per container will be important - can you give us a ballpark figure?

[Jackster]

 Product looks great (the 3D renders at least), and I could see my prototyping bench with some of these on it. Would look and function pretty nicely. But it would just be for vanity more than anything. Right now we use R&C books, and well organised box of component bags and reels for prototypes.

Hopefully you can mass manufacturer these so the price per is low enough to make it a good value proposition.
Don't forget, we all have 3D printers of our own, a Maker would easily clone this within a few hours. The cost to print a few dozen is not that much. For makers, it is just convince and time you are selling.

Maybe if you do a large enough package, SMEs might buy into it?

Will have to wait and see what pricing you can come up with.

[sleemanj]

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3952021 (also check the remixes)

Don't know if OP is the same guy.

[xrunner]

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3952021 (also check the remixes)

Don't know if OP is the same guy.

3D printing them was just what I was thinking about when I saw the OP. The way it's designed is perfect for 3D printing.

[Kean]

Your website is pretty and lots of nice renders, but is there actual 3D printed or injection molded parts yet?
You mention ESD bags at the start of your post.  So, is there plans for the green (or any colour) ones to be ESD safe?

While not identical it is clearly a derivative of the "SMD Component Magazines" design by Robin Reiter (linked above) which is licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution - Non-Commercial license.  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

So did you contact Robin and agree to some alternate licensing terms?

I'll admit there is some nice thought put into improvements in this version, but the above does seem problematic.

Robin is apparently working on the draft angles of his design for mass production... https://twitter.com/robin7331/status/1578307622767570944

[Mechatrommer]

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3952021 (also check the remixes)

Don't know if OP is the same guy.

3D printing them was just what I was thinking about when I saw the OP. The way it's designed is perfect for 3D printing.

seems like a nice idea, diy printing them even nicer but... when looking at my prototyping stock.. i probably need hundred of reels and a full room wall to store them... i think i just put back the box where it was.

[Kean]

seems like a nice idea, diy printing them even nicer but... when looking at my prototyping stock.. i probably need hundred of reels and a full room wall to store them... i think i just put back the box where it was.

Yeah, um... even worse than that for me.  I have ~15 drawers each full of maybe one hundred baggies typically containing 100-1000 per value sorted by value.  Separate drawers for 0402/0603/0805/1206 resistors/caps/ferrites/etc, with some like 0603 & 0805 resistors using multiple drawers.  Not to mention a huge number of reels of parts for the PnPs.

The original idea here was you just put together a "rail" of the parts for a particular BOM when doing small scale manual assembly, not necessarily a magazine for every part you might own.
Especially handy when using Robins Pixel Pump (I use a JBC vacuum placement tool).

[sokoloff]

That seems like a really strange ordering of capacitor values in the rendering (by value expressed alphanumerically rather than by value)

[r_karthik_r]

Thank you everyone for your interest in this project.

When I personally started facing this problem, I started looking out for commercial solutions and none were available off the shelf.

The Design has been done for injection molding with all the design for manufacturing into consideration.

Please find one of the posters with our 3D printed models.



As you are well aware the price per piece is low but as we are going in for injection molding there is a significant CAPEX involved, So we are trying to arrive at a specific price point that balances its value and CAPEX on the other end.

We will keep you guys updated as we evolve with our marketing efforts. Follow us at https://www.instagram.com/reelmag.store/ for more regular updates and use cases.

[r_karthik_r]

That seems like a really strange ordering of capacitor values in the rendering (by value expressed alphanumerically rather than by value)

Yes, the capacitor values are just put in for render purposes. Nothing specific in there. Anyway, the reels are not marked off the package you can print or write your own values on our A4 sticker templates.

[r_karthik_r]

Your website is pretty and lots of nice renders, but is there actual 3D printed or injection molded parts yet?
You mention ESD bags at the start of your post.  So, is there plans for the green (or any colour) ones to be ESD safe?

While not identical it is clearly a derivative of the "SMD Component Magazines" design by Robin Reiter (linked above) which is licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution - Non-Commercial license.  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

So did you contact Robin and agree to some alternate licensing terms?

I'll admit there is some nice thought put into improvements in this version, but the above does seem problematic.

Robin is apparently working on the draft angles of his design for mass production... https://twitter.com/robin7331/status/1578307622767570944

Hi Kean,

Thanks for your interest in the project. The units will be injection molded. Our design has already been made with manufacturability design considerations. We have a roadmap for ESD safe mags, There is no extra effort from our end. We just need to balance volume requirements and pricing.

Yes while we started working on it we did notice different models including Robins for reference. And as said we have tried to build functionalities to solve all the issues faced by makers community.

[r_karthik_r]

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3952021 (also check the remixes)

Don't know if OP is the same guy.

3D printing them was just what I was thinking about when I saw the OP. The way it's designed is perfect for 3D printing.

seems like a nice idea, diy printing them even nicer but... when looking at my prototyping stock.. i probably need hundred of reels and a full room wall to store them... i think i just put back the box where it was.

Haha . I was also in the same stage and that is how this came up.

After making this project I realized that we have so many reels that not even a full-sized reel mag would be sufficient to store all of our experimental chips and reels.

But, It would be of great convenience and time saver to store our most commonly used components within our hands reach on our maker table. 

[r_karthik_r]

Product looks great (the 3D renders at least), and I could see my prototyping bench with some of these on it. Would look and function pretty nicely. But it would just be for vanity more than anything. Right now we use R&C books, and well organised box of component bags and reels for prototypes.

Hopefully you can mass manufacturer these so the price per is low enough to make it a good value proposition.
Don't forget, we all have 3D printers of our own, a Maker would easily clone this within a few hours. The cost to print a few dozen is not that much. For makers, it is just convince and time you are selling.

Maybe if you do a large enough package, SMEs might buy into it?

Will have to wait and see what pricing you can come up with.

Hi Jackster,

We are aware of the R&C book holders but they had a few major drawbacks such as

• it can only hold a few components in one slot which might get consumed easily depending on the scale
• no way of tracking if a particular component is available (in stock or not)
• No provision to store loose components

.
and so on. Then we did check a few other 3d printed solutions and decided to make features to tackle all the problems and ended with this design.

We have 3D printed the model for our current marketing efforts. We spent almost a month with a single machine to 3D print all 30 units. It was very time-consuming and the front glass panel is still a challenge to handle with.

[Ranayna]

Grab the limited-time offer to get a free ReelMag!! Check www.reelmag.store

You need to take a look at your SSL Certifcates for www.reelmag.store. The certifcate is only valid for wheelmag.store, not for www.reelmag.store. And yes, there is a difference, and yes, it's important. At least if you link with www included

I will refrain on critcising the website itself too much, but i was maybe half a second from just closing it. Really think about if you want that website, with that forced animation, to advertise to engineers. At the moment it feels a bit like a waste of time.

[PlainName]

but i was maybe half a second from just closing it

Likewise. And going back later to check something I saw at the bottom of the page... you have to wait and go through all the animation again. Doesn't encourage repeat visits. Or even a simple refresh.

[ebastler]

As you are well aware the price per piece is low but as we are going in for injection molding there is a significant CAPEX involved, So we are trying to arrive at a specific price point that balances its value and CAPEX on the other end.

Yes, we are aware of the math. But what is the result?? We really need to know the pricing. Having a ".store" website where one can't buy anything (yet) is one thing, but a .store which does not even have a price list is pointless.

While not identical it is clearly a derivative of the "SMD Component Magazines" design by Robin Reiter (linked above) which is licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution - Non-Commercial license.  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

So did you contact Robin and agree to some alternate licensing terms?

Why would that be necessary? Most likely Robin Reiter's design is not patented, i.e. Robin has not protected any aspect of its functionality. And the specific implementation of the OP's SMD magazines is different enough -- I am pretty sure that they started a 3D design from scratch, and did not use Robin's drawings or CAD model. Hence, no license needed.

[ebastler]

Oh, one more thought:

It's probably too late in the design process now, but I think these should ideally be compatible with DIN rails for mounting. I would much prefer solid wall-mounted metal rails to some custom plastic pieces.

[r_karthik_r]

I think these should ideally be compatible with DIN rails for mounting. I would much prefer solid wall-mounted metal rails to some custom plastic pieces.

Thank you for the input. We did consider it in our design phase. But removing the mags of a DIN rail turned out to be cumbersome. We couldn't stack the rails one above the other.

[r_karthik_r]

We wanted to share with you guys this picture of a 3D printed ReelMag

[PlainName]

The loose compartment bit is a significant aspect, I think. Deals with those tapes where the cover came off just one more than it should have, etc.

[TomWinTejas]

Just FYI, there are some misspellings and odd phrasings on the website. 

"The top plastic cover can be pulled out exploring the component for solidering." for example.  I think exposing rather than exploring may make more sense, and soldering rather than solidering.  There was another section where replenish was spelled replinish as well.  I didn't look too closely, but it's worth a quick proofread.

Best of luck with the product neighbor (the website's mailing address is only a few miles from my home)!

[r_karthik_r]

Hi Guys,

Just a gentle reminder in case

[sokoloff]

Heads-up, in case you care (which you almost surely do!):

Going to: https://www.reelmag.store/

gives me a certificate warning that the site certificate being served is from getdiety.com and the content served to me if I accept the certificate warning is also getdiety.com.

I don't have time or motivation to troubleshoot exactly why that's happening, but you presumably have more of at the least the latter.

[Haenk]

Just a gentle reminder in case

Well, DNS and/or hosting is borked, only food stuff now.