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.

Automotive V belt "Squeal" noise testing machine

Designed and built for a V belt manufacturer. Used for comparing squeal noise levels between the client's V belts and their competitor's ones.. Squeal noise is caused by misalignment in the pulleys. A simple threaded rod was used to create various degrees of misalignments between the pulleys. Decibel levels were measured by using noise level sensors (if that's what they are called).

Rubeer sheet strip cutting machine

Designed for a tyre manufacturer. Used an Allen Bradley servo for pulling the sheet to the required length, a rodless Festo pneumatic cylinder then dragged a motorized rotary blade to slice the sheet at the required length. The required lengths and number of pieces were entered in a 6inch HMI screen by the operator. To prevent sheet moving during the slicing process a pneumatic cylinder held the sheet. 

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.