What do you do when faced with measuring and cutting a bunch of cables? If you’re Edward Carlson, you “simply” build a machine to do it for you.
While it may not save time on this run, at least on the next occasion that he needs a few cables cut, he can just program his device to snip everything to size.
His setup uses an Arduino Mega with an LCD/button shield to tell the machine how long to snip each wire, then employs a stepper motor to move the cable between two rollers to the correct length. When in position, a high-torque servo actuates a (normally) manual pair of clippers to cut it to size.
Be sure to check out the project explanation in the video seen here, or skip to around 5:30 to see it in action.
youtube.com/watch?v=ztCUyUYWrBc
https://blog.arduino.cc/.../create-an-arduino-mega.../
From Arduino.org