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Digi-Key and Mouser already do this for many many parts. Both offer to sell you a short bit of tape-held parts re-reeled and ready for insertion into a pick an
by bradfa 5y ago
Digi-Key and Mouser already do this for many many parts. Both offer to sell you a short bit of tape-held parts re-reeled and ready for insertion into a pick and place machine. Granted that's just for electronics and it sounds like you want it for more general things.
Part of the problem for doing it with other things is likely regulations and labeling. Back near the start of COVID I heard stories about how there was lots of cheese in bulk packs which couldn't easily be repurposed into consumer-friendly sized units (most normal consumers don't want to buy in units of cubic feet of cheese in the USA). Part of the reason it couldn't easily be repurposed was simply that no one had ever created a consumer-sized package label for it. So not only did the cheese need to be handled again, packaged again, but it also had to be relabeled and approved by what ever agencies approve or rate cheeses.
- bluGill 5y agoIn the case of sour cream, the issue was the line making 5 gallon buckets couldn't fill smaller containers, and even if they could there weren't enough smaller containers. Whole factories are optimized for a package format and can't switch. This is a trade off - some factories are more flexible than others. However if you can fill both sizes of containers (in reality there are more than two sizes, but for simplicity I'll use two) that means half the time the jigs needed for the one size are not in use - but they still need to be cleaned and such. You can't even skip cleaning because harmful bacteria doesn't care that it wasn't use much - in fact you might need to clean more often if the constant movement isn't flushing insignificant amounts away.