Automobile badge masking system.

Automobile manufacturer's badges in the steering wheels are ultrasonic welded. The badges have small protrusions at the back for insertion into holes in the steering wheels. These are then welded ultrasonically to the steering wheel. Only a certain length of the protrusion needs to be welded. If the weld is short then the badge becomes loose during hard braking or front end collisions and injures the driver. If the weld is more it creates the same problem. A maskant is used for ensuring the weld does not overshoot the required length. Accuracy required is+/-0.05mm. A simple wirecut fixture was used to hold the badge, fixture+badge slid on rails and was picked by a simple pneumatic pick and place system. The fixture with badge was placed over a pump+pipes+tank circuit. The fixture ensures the badge is coated only to the required level. Another pick and place system removes the fixture+badge and places a it on the output rails. A drying circuit pumps hot air over the maskant for drying. 

Automotive V belt "Improper profile" indication system

Designed and built for a V belt manufacturer. Contains 2 sets of changeable nylon pulleys with grooves machined to mate with correct profile V belt. A rodless pneumatic cylinder raises and lowers the bottom pulley set for facilitating belt removal. Rollers are placed above each groove. These rollers "roll" over the V belt surface as the top pulley is rotated by an induction motor. Each roller has a proximity sensor placed above it. A V belt with an improper profile will not sit in its groove but be raised a bit thereby moving the roller towards the proximity sensor. A simple alarm system indicates to the operator which belt has an improper profile.

Mini pneumatic presses and hand held special tools

Built a series of very small pneumatic presses and hand held special tools for an automotive company. Operators needed their fatigue reduced for jobs like circlip insertion, bearing pressing, bimetallic biush pressing, diesel pump priming, pneumatic clamps for a sub assembly work, fixtures, etc. Very small work but interesting as it involved a lot of study into how the operator assembled a particular component, how he held it, how the component was placed in his work bench, ergonomics of that particular component when it was placed in the automobile for example-the priming tool for diesel pump was to to be used after the pump was installed in the vehicle so holding the tool while priming was being done was required. We had to 'fix' the tool on the vehicle's exhaust while priming and for this we had to measure to take measurements while the vehicle was moving in the assembly line.

Electronic Road Barrier

A friend's company had a contract to install 6 road barriers around Madurai. They imported 5 from Italy and requested payment from their customer. The customer asked them to install the sixth within a month or loose payment. Shipment from Italy will take more than a month. I was approached to build this within a month which we did. We worked in tandem with a boy electronic wizard, a school dropout who is still the best micro controller/PLC expert I've seen in a long time and what's more, he can give any mechanical designer in for his money.

Oh, and the machine has a tubular frame, stainless steel cover, micro controller controls (I'm not sure what he used), aluminium barrier arm. Strikingly powder coated in orange.

Composter

A prototype 2 stage composter for apartments. Used for recycling kitchen waste, both vegetarian and non vegetarian. The user deposits kitchen waste into top chamber. A motorozied stirrer churns the waste thereby letting oxygen in and speeding up the decaying process. After each day the volume of the food inside chamber one reduces due to loss of fluids. After a few days a door at the bottom of chamber one opens thereby moving first chamber's food into chamber two. Again a stirrer churns the waste speeding up the decaying. Completely decayed food is collection below chamber two in a tray. Having lost all liquids and gases the waste now has the sweet smell of earth. 

Faced a lot of challenges in stirring large sized food. Chopping was required. Had control an for varying stirring time and number of days to door opening. 

XYZ platform

Something which I'm developing for production. An XYZ platform for non-contact applications. Powered by Allen Bradley servos and PLCs, the XYZ platform is built on a Aluminum profile frame. Can be used for a lot non-contact industrial applications. 

Mechanical art--wind powered

One project which I'm hoping would give me an entry into the mechanical art world. A world which I admire a lot. 

This system consists of 3 steel fabricated spheres, one inside the other, made of perforated sheets, rotating in opposite directions. Spheres rotate due to wind vanes placed at the bottom. The innermost sphere contains a light bulb at its inside. The lighting effect when spheres rotate is magical. Built for a European artist.

Textile Fabric Printer

A printer based on the normal inkjet A3 printer for printing patterns on a textile fabric fed from a roll. The whole "body" of the printer was 3d printed in 3 parts and stuck together at Vellore Institute of Technology. A hot air circuit was incorporated for drying the fabric after printing. The elctricals and software was done by another company.

Gear dispensing system

An indexing table with a pneumatic arm for "pushing" out the bottom most gear in the stacks. Gears are stacked one over the other on aN indexing plate powered by an induction motor. An OMRON proximity sensor is used for stopping each stack in front of the pneumatic arm so bottom most gear is pushed out every time the pneumatic arm operated. The top of each stack has a plate with internal gear tooth cut in it. This ensures only that particular gear type can be stacked in that particular row.

Tyre tube valve auto pick and place system

An XY table+ pick and place system combo for a tube/tyre manufacturer. Installed in their tube extruder line. A tray with valves placed in a 11x11 matrix is placed on a stepper motor controlled XY table. A pneumatic powered rack moves a pinion connected to a pick and place arm. Arm has a FESTO pneumatic gripper with custom fingers which have grooved cut in them for grip. Zeron welds used, all machined components mounted on a CNC machined plated.

Hitch Kitchen

A unique product in the sense that I totally couldn't relate to this. Never having traveled around the country in a SUV and definitely never have taken my kitchen around. Designed and built this for an American customer. Foldable mini, mobile kitchen containing space for utensils, drinking water tank, dirty(from the sink) water reservoir, stainless steel sink with hand pump as tap for washing and a space for the stove and LPG cylinder. The whole unit has a subframe which can be mounted on the rear of a SUV.

Aluminum Anodizing plant-Complete design in Solidworks

Provided complete design of an Aluminum component anodizing plant. Included over head transporter with mechanism for raising and lowering jigs containing aluminium components. Completely automatic system with manual intervention for loading and unloading components only.

Multi-tool

Always a challenge and pleasure to work on small, multi featured mechanisms. Developednfor a customer in Germany but unfortunately never got made. Hope to make at least a few prototypes soon. Contain small the usual multi tool features like peeler, screw driver, can opener, hacksaw, knife, scissors, etc. What was included was a torx holder and Allen key holder. Included a rubber grip and a unique wrist gauntlet for holding the tool.

Solidworks Doodles

A few of the designs done during down time. A three wheeled tourist trike, micro tractor designed around a Greaves twin cylinder diesel engine, a pocket blender, moped, laptop stand, truck rear view mirror cleaning system.

Cashew sorter

A miniature prototype of a cashew sorting system. After roasting cashews are required to be sorted based on the level of roasting. Cashews are made to fall on a Rockwell servo operated indexing table. A Cognex vision camera "sees" the cashews and a software signals a simple pneumatic SOV to blow the cashews into their respective collection boxes.

Textile fabric Rerolling machine

A machine used for refilling large Greg fabric rolls into smaller ones. Smaller rolls can easily be carried over to exibhitions for display. Consists of a analogue meter for measurement of length. Rolling is done using a hand operated lever. Whole machine is completely dismantleable. Was shipped in knocked down condition to the US, where the customer assembled everything as per our manual and instruction manual. Zero welding was used in any of the components. 

NVH reduction in a Diesel powered power generator

A very unique project.  A customer bought a crude diesel generator to us and asked us to reduce the NVh levels and make it more mobile. We proposed 4 designs and the customer selected the one in the photographs. The alternator and engine were joined together using 2 clam like housings. One half of the housing was fixed on the engine while the other was on the alternator. The 2 halves were joined together with 15 M12, nickel plated Allen bolts. The 2 bearing design of the alternator was converted into a single bearing one by cutting the excess shaft from the rotor by lathe machining. Once both housings were joined the engine and alternator were a single unit. The housings were sand cast cast iron with wooden patterns. Power was transmitted from engine to alternator through a Fenner Lovejoy coupling. The whole engine+alternator combo was mounted on a pallet truck with rubber anti-vibration mounts in between. Pallet truck ensured more mobility, cast iron housings, vibro isolators ensured significant reduction of NVH levels.

Wheelchair Hub Gearbox

A planetary gearbox mounted inside the hub of a wheelchair wheel. The axle passed through the center of hub. Converted a single speed manual gearbox into a 2 speed wheelchair. A second handrail was connected to the center gear thereby stepping up torque. This second hand rail was used for inclines. The whole gearbox was less than 2 inches in thickness.

Hydraulic Cylinder assembly workstation

Complete workstation for assembly of a tractor's hydraulic cylinder. Assembly consisted of hydraulic cylinder, piston with O ring and a circlip. Consisted of custom designed input trolleys, bins, pneumatic presses, fixtures, poke yoke systems, output trolleys, etc. Faced challenges due to high variations in the dimensions of hydraulic cylinder which was because unfinished sand cast exterior. Detailed pre design study ensured the operator never had to lift the component at any stage of assembly including when transferring from station to output trolley.

Cam shaft press

Simple pneumatic press for insertion of circlip and key into automotive engine camshaft. Faced challenges  in orienting perfectly round camshaft for key insertion. Used Janatics pneumatics and Omron PLCs.