Automatic Can-Crusher

In the first week, the selection of team members were done. The students were allowed to form their own groups of 5 to 6 members in a group. Our group consisted of 7 members. Each member was assigned with a particular task or activity in the project.

In the 2nd Week, we went through variuos engineering projects over the internet in order to gather ideas and decide a project for our group. We considered the following projects:

• Fire extingusiher

• Security Gate

• Robotic Scrap Collector

• Automatic Can-Crusher

We shared the idea of each project with the module tutor to guide us in selecting an appropriate project.

After the 2nd week activity, the 3rd & 4th week were for finilasing the project and carrying out various researches on it such as mechanism of operation, design, type of motor to be used, etc. Once the research was complete, the complete system was designed in 3D in SolidWorks. The design gave a wide idea about how the actual product will look like.

The 5th week was assigned for the manufacturing of each part. Some of the parts had to be welded to each other, whcih was done outside the campus in a workshop. The flywheel was welded to the motor shaft and the piston rod was welded to another rod in order to make it longer. Also, the frame of the entire system was made from mild steel hollow bars.

Once the parts were ready, it was time to assemble them. The assembling of parts was done in the 6th week.

After the assembly, testing of the device was done in the same week. Unfortunately, the initial motor selection was not done properly, therefore, it produced very high RPM with very low torque. Due to this, the device was overpowered and wasn't able to crush the cans properly and the piston went out of control.

Due to the problems faced in the 6th week, the 7th week was assigned to find a solution and bring the device under control as well as crush the cans properly. One of the team member came up with the idea of covering the piston with cut-out PVC pipe so that it doesn't fly back and stays in its path. But sadly, the problem didn't solve since the actual problem was with the overpowered motor.

In the 8th week, we tried to come up with ideas of controlling the motor speed but then we realized it wasn't the speed that made the problem but the torque in the motor was not enough to crush the can. Therefore, we decided to change the motor and replace it with a car's wiper motor. This motor had high torque with reduced RPM.

After changing the motor, the testing was also done simultaneously in the same week to check if the new motor was functional.