The Crushinator 2015 Pop Can Crusher

[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.

[littlemissGTO]

Well fooey, I didn't realize that I can only post one video in a thread at a time. Here's the second video:

[AutoRoc]

Fun!!! In third grade I made a can crusher with a little air cylinder and a bike tire pump. it was not video worthy....

[The Man]

Your blue font makes this extremely difficult to read.....

Looks like a fun project.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk 2

[DennisH]

Cool project. I work with some engineers and designers who would benefit from that class.

Dennis

[beertestr]

Did you have a cost target? At GMI (aka Kettering) we had to design an apparatus to climb a rope and traverse a set distance as close to a set time as possible. We had a list of materials we could work with, all with assigned value, dc motors, wood dowels, particle board ("sold" by square foot). The rankings were based on cost and performance. We got 2nd, the first place team won with a similar design but they made better use of the particle board and made there machine 1 point cheaper. It was a good "aha" moment and an awesome learning experience. When my daughter gets a little older we are going to do 1st Robotics..

[littlemissGTO]

Fun!!! In third grade I made a can crusher with a little air cylinder and a bike tire pump. it was not video worthy....

LOL. The project was fun, but man did it take up a lot of time.

Your blue font makes this extremely difficult to read.....

Looks like a fun project.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk 2

Sorry about that. Interestingly enough, the color makes it easy for me to find my posts...LOL

Cool project. I work with some engineers and designers who would benefit from that class.

Dennis

Did you have a cost target? At GMI (aka Kettering) we had to design an apparatus to climb a rope and traverse a set distance as close to a set time as possible. We had a list of materials we could work with, all with assigned value, dc motors, wood dowels, particle board ("sold" by square foot). The rankings were based on cost and performance. We got 2nd, the first place team won with a similar design but they made better use of the particle board and made there machine 1 point cheaper. It was a good "aha" moment and an awesome learning experience. When my daughter gets a little older we are going to do 1st Robotics..

With the first couple of project we had to do there was a limit on materials. We were provided with them, and couldn't use more. In fact I had a similar moment with our straw bridge project. My bridge held more bricks than anyone else, but because we didn't turn in any tape, placed last instead of first. Grrr. With this project we didn't have any limits on cost, just time. If we had a week longer, an electric motor would have been used to crush the cans as well.

[beertestr]

Least amount of credit hours, most amount of learning. Try Formula SAE. 0 credits, the best education i could have had. Participation took me from a 3.8GPA to a 2.9, but I would do the same thing again.

[4 cam tbird]

We were actually able to turn Mini Baja into design credits, required additional work on your end to document what you did to get the credits but was totally worth it

[beertestr]

There was 4 credit hours if you designed the car as part of your senior design project, so 1 year of participation was covered for credit. The other 2 years... nope. We designed the whole car in AutoCAD im 3d back in 1996. It took 3 hours to render it with the processor horsepower we had back then. We had a lot of the frame done before we even turned in the project, so we brought it in for our presentation.