Our company has a machine that is run by all manual switches now. Basically it pulls material through a set of gears and shapes it. after it goes through the gears a blade cuts it at the desired length. we are look to use a rotary encoder to keep track of the rotation from the gears. then have it send a signal to an arduino uno which sends a signal to the two solenoids telling the blade to cut. is this all the more we’d need to accomplish this? i’m assuming we’d need a breadboard and lcd screen as well. all we are looking to do is cut the material at a desired length repetitively and accurately.
Hi,
Indeed, a microcontroller board (Arduino in your case) and an encoder are definitely the basic components for such a project. You mention “sending a signal” to the two solenoids. Will this be sent to a input port that is meant for 5 V DC digital signal (such as those given by an Arduino)? If not, you may need some interface components there to make them compatible or simply adding relays to trigger the solenoids yourself.
As for breadboard and LCD, you can have a look at these and these. My personal favorite is the RB-Ite-161 since it includes buttons and breakout for analog input pins.
Since this will probably be interacting with a large, powerful machine, you probably want also an emergency cut off button nearby, such as one of these.
As for accuracy, it will depend mostly on the encoder chosen and how it is attached to your system/machine (and, of course, how well your code uses it 
).
Sincerely,