The Crushinator 2015

[littlemissGTO]

As many of you know, I attend Lawrence Tech and I'm studying mechanical engineering. One of my classes is called Fundamentals of Engineering Design. Let me tell you, for a one credit hour course, this class keeps me way too damned busy. Any who, one of our projects was to build a pop can crusher. We were limited on size and had several required features. The cans had to enter the apparatus horizontally and travel 36" inches, then change orientation and drop vertically 20" and fall into the crusher. The crusher could not be larger than 36" by 36". Once the can was crushed it had to exit the crusher and land on a conveyor belt, and the conveyor belt had to carry the can away from the crusher and into a bag or trash can. Oh and the can had to be rushed to a minimum of one and one half inches. The conveyor belt had to be motorized, and we were limited to 12 volts. Every group came up with something different, but we (as in my group) managed to shock and amazed every one. Now our original intent was to have the crusher and the conveyor belt motorized, but we ran into a snag the night before the project was due. We couldn't get our motor (a DeWalt drill) to keep tension on the chain we had and we really didn't have enough time to build a box that would hold it in place. Of course this made me a sad panda, but the project still turned out very well. In fact, the Crushinator will be on display at school until the end of the semester.
Here are some pictures from the build:
Trying to build a box that would hold the drill in place (clamps were our friend):

This is how the crusher would have looked if we had gotten the drill to stay in place:

Some vinyl work:

The finished project:



I forgot to get a photo of the box we built that holds a six pack of cans. I'll get one when we set it up for display next week.
Here are a couple of videos of the Crushinator in action. I'll apologize for the unsteady hands. I couldn't find my damned tripod before I left for class. The first video is our pitch (for extra credit) and the second video is of the Crushinator actually working.


Our next project is to build a robot that will navigate through a mazed of duct work, flip a switch, and retrieve a balloon (either inflated or all of the pieces) and then reverse course. Ugh.

[astrochex]

Very cool. When I saw the title, I thought it might be about the GTO.

[chad]

I made a pneumatic one that used prox sensors and a PLC.... Wife was scared of it..... It was.... um... impressive.

[littlemissGTO]

I made a pneumatic one that used prox sensors and a PLC.... Wife was scared of it..... It was.... um... impressive.

We were specifically told no pneumatics. I guess our instructor was afraid of us...LOL

[imjustjason]

We had to build a catapult, which was great fun, but then the day after presentations he told us we then had to find and calculate all the forces acting on all the members and stresses on the connection points. Fun killed.