Mech 4860: Engineering Design Final Design Report
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Mech 4860: Engineering Design Final Design Report Project: Paper Layup Machine Company: Botanical PaperWorks Project Advisor: Vern Campbell Group Number: 17 Group Members Ryan Dingwall Jianyu Ma Courtney Mandock Alex Taplin Date Submitted: December 6th, 2017 Submitted to: Bryce Saunders, Director of Operations at Botanical PaperWorks Vern Campbell, Faculty Advisor Paul Labossiere, Instructor 0 Executive Summary Botanical PaperWorks, a leading producer of environmentally friendly seed paper products, makes biodegradable seed paper from post-consumer waste. The process to create these products is labour intensive. The process starts by creating a paper and seed slurry, where a mesh screen scoops up the slurry and forms it into a wet sheet. Pressure is applied on the sheets to reduce water weight, after which the paper goes to the drying station. Once the paper is dry, the paper is printed and packaged according to the orders. The current paper thickness ranges from 0.223 mm to 0.273 mm, a 10% variation, across both a single sheet of paper and across multiple sheets, due to inaccuracies in the handmade process. The objective of this project was to develop a process that will reduce paper thickness variation to 3% between sheets and within a single piece of paper. As well, the process will decrease operator strain from a subjective strain scale of 5/10 to 3/10 and increase the current output to more than the current 96 sheets per hour, up to an ideal value of 192 sheets per hour. The team generated 15 concepts that were compared against each other by using a screening matrix and a weighted scoring matrix. Eight concepts advanced to the testing and design phase. From these eight concepts, six concepts were designed and tested by rapid proto- typing. The six that were tested were a slurry shaker, slicer, a scooter, a roller press, a piston, and a change in process layout. The remaining two, the modified hydraulic press and the thickness sensor, were not able to be tested due to a lack of testing equipment. A unique element throughout this project is that the team has not been looking for the single best concept, but rather the ideal process. This means that although the best concepts were identified, they may not create the ideal process when combined. Through analysis of the test results, the following six concepts were optimized to create the ideal process: a slurry shaker to improve paper tolerances, a scooter to reduce operator strain, a roller press and piston that, if implemented properly, will improve tolerance and reduce production and drying time, and a process change layout that will improve the efficiency of the operators. iii These six concepts were optimized and have become the final process design. There are also three opportunities for future changes, which would make the system more readily automatic. With all implemented changes, the total cost of the final design is between $32,050.44 and $32,395.44. iv Table of Contents Executive Summary ............................................................................................................. iii List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... vii List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... viii 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 1.1. Purpose and Problem .............................................................................................. 3 1.2. Expectation ............................................................................................................. 4 1.3. Customer Needs ...................................................................................................... 4 1.4. Limitations .............................................................................................................. 5 1.5. Technical Specifications ......................................................................................... 6 1.6. Metrics with Marginal and Ideal Values ................................................................ 6 2. Preliminary Concepts ................................................................................................. 7 2.1. Methodology ........................................................................................................... 8 2.2. Concept Description ............................................................................................... 8 2.3. Concept Screening ................................................................................................ 12 2.4. Concept Scoring ................................................................................................... 13 3. Testing Plans and Detailed Concept Descriptions ................................................... 15 3.1. Slurry Tray Shaker ................................................................................................ 17 3.2. Slurry Tray Slicer ................................................................................................. 18 3.3. Scooter .................................................................................................................. 20 3.4. Roller Press ........................................................................................................... 22 3.5. Piston .................................................................................................................... 23 3.6. Change Process Layout ........................................................................................ 24 3.7. Ultrasonic Sensor .................................................................................................. 26 4. Testing Results ......................................................................................................... 27 4.1. Slurry Tray Shaker ................................................................................................ 27 4.2. Slurry Tray Slicer ................................................................................................. 27 4.3. Scooter .................................................................................................................. 30 4.4. Roller Press ........................................................................................................... 30 4.5. Piston .................................................................................................................... 34 5. Optimization ............................................................................................................. 36 5.1. Slurry Shaker Tray ................................................................................................ 36 v 5.2. Scooter .................................................................................................................. 37 5.3. Roller Press ........................................................................................................... 38 5.4. Piston .................................................................................................................... 39 5.5. Thickness Measurement Sensor ........................................................................... 43 6. Final Design ............................................................................................................. 44 6.1. Recommendations ................................................................................................ 46 7. Future Considerations .............................................................................................. 46 7.1. Hydraulic Lifting Table ........................................................................................ 46 7.2. Slurry Trough ....................................................................................................... 48 7.3. Printing ................................................................................................................. 48 8. Cost Breakdown ....................................................................................................... 49 9. Summary .................................................................................................................. 50 10. References ................................................................................................................ 51 vi List of Figures Figure 1: Process flow diagram for Botanical PaperWorks .................................................. 1 Figure 2: Woman lifting copper screen from paper slurry to create a single sheet of paper..2 Figure 3: Hydraulic press used to squeeze water out of paper sheets ................................... 2 Figure 4: Sketch of the bottom of the shaker ...................................................................... 17 Figure 5: Sketch of the shaker in use with a tray on top ..................................................... 17 Figure 6: Slurry slicer sketch .............................................................................................. 19 Figure 7: Scooter concept model ......................................................................................... 20 Figure 8: Model of scooter with added design considerations ............................................ 21 Figure 9: Sketch of clothes wringer .................................................................................... 22 Figure 10: