Simulated Factory Assembly Line

5/4/17

Finally, the final project has approached. After many challenging and stressing projects, it is now time to prove our knowledge with the grand finale. This project will require us to use everything we learned from previous projects and combine it to make an assembly line. This is how the project works; the class is organized in 3 groups, so there would be 3 different factories. In each of those groups, there will be 6 work cells, each assigned to a group of two.

Here are the 6 different work cells;

Block Entrance - Erika

Top and Side Slots - Jimmy and Danny

Top and Side Holes - Likun and Greg

Front and Rear Chamfer- Tracy and Simon

Side Chamfer and Paint - Jacklyn and Sarah

Block Exit - John and Dahlia

The goal of this project is to combine all of the work cells together to form an assembly line, so it would "seem" like it's building the assembly line block. The project is supposed to be a simulation of an actual factory and how things work.

1 picture of the block

side view/angle

This is a side and angle view of the Front and Rear Chamfer Simon and I built for this project. For more details, check out the boxes below.

2 pictures of the block

Bird POV

Front and Rear Chamfer

Workcell #4

Computer Engineer: Tracy

Mechanical Engineer: Simon

Our task for this project was to design a mechanical system that would be able to cut the front and back sides of the building block at a 45-degree angle. Our plan for the system was to make 2 rack and pinion systems and attach the motor to the gear with a slider, so the rack wouldn't be moving, but rather the pinion. This way, I could connect the second motor to the pinion at a 45-degree angle downwards to cut the rear chamfer. The second rack and pinion is pretty much the same, except that it has to be reflected in order to cut the front chamfer at a 45-degree angle. Lastly, we added the line tracker to detect the block and stop the conveyor belt when necessary.

2 pics of assembly line

As simple as it may have seemed, there were much more problems during the build. The first problem we encountered was the alignment of the C-channel and steel bars. Since we were going to make our rack and pinion at an angle, we had to make sure the C-channel was able to match with the steel bars. With that problem, we couldn't move on until we fixed it, so we spent almost a whole week aligning the C-channels. The next problem we encountered was the pinion on a slider. My plan for the pinion was to put the motor on top to run the gear and connect another motor at 45-degrees to serve as a cutting gear for the front and rear chamfers. However, we soon learned that it would make the slider lean to the side too much and fall off. That problem kept us stuck for a few days until I solved the problem by putting a small steel bar under the slider, so it would be able to hold up the slider. Of course, there were also little problems, like not enough materials or broken materials, but that was pretty much the main problems we encountered.

Speaking of not enough materials, there was a huge problem for this particular project. Since the whole class was divided into teams of three, with work cells of 2 people each, different groups had different paces. Therefore, since assembly lines 1 and 2 were finished with their sketch and designing early, Mr. Reyes let us into the engineering room before group 3. Unfortunately, that's where things took a wrong turn. Once those two groups filed in, they took so many materials that by the time group 3 came, there were scarcely any left. We were lucky that we took everything we needed, because group 3 was left with barely anything to work with. I found it pretty unfair to that group, because many groups also hogged all the materials.

If I had a chance to redo this project, I think it would be more organized if we wrote down what we needed and only used those materials instead of taking everything and not letting other people use them. We already have limited materials, so we have to use our limited resources to the best of our ability without using too much. That way, our entire class can succeed in the simulated factory cell project without worrying about stealing, scavenging and such.