Publication Date

5-8-2017

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Salehinia, Iman

Degree Name

B.A. (Bachelor of Arts)

Legacy Department

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Abstract

A pharmaceutical company makes a product that requires them to extract medical grade salve from tubes so that it can be mixed with another salve. Currently, the company has workers manually twist off the caps and put the tubes into an extraction machine. This current method has caused several workers to develop wrist problems and does not allow the company to meet demand. A process was created to automate the removal of the caps from the salve tubes. A feed system was designed to be able to be able to be continuously loaded with multiple tubes and feed one tube at a time into the tube holder. A tube holder was designed to hold the body of a tube firmly so that the cap can be cut without salve being squeezed out. A cutting process was created based off of finite element analysis of the interaction of a blade tip and the tube. A blade cuts the cap off of the tube after it is fed into the tube holder. An assembly using two linear actuators was designed to move the tube holder over and up into the extraction machine consisting of a squeezing roll set. Motion analysis using data from real components found that the designed machine can run with a three second cycle time. This simulated cycle time would allow the company to meet their production demand. The designed machine would cost roughly $5,487.

Comments

This was a collaborative report by 4 mechanical engineering students.

Additional Files
SeniorDesignPaper(AllParts).pdf (2475 kB)
Final Senior Design Paper including all group members

Extent

59 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

Download

Share

COinS