Date of Award

5-6-2024

Degree Type

Capstone Project

First Advisor

Bahram Nassersharif

Abstract

This report will comprehensively discuss the preliminary design, concepts, and the overall progress achieved by Team 03 throughout the year of Mechanical Engineering Capstone Design at the University of Rhode Island (URI). Toray Plastics of America, Inc. (Toray) has presented Team 03 with an exceptional design and manufacturing challenge to create a cart and winch system (cart) for a section of their A6 thin film processing line called the transverse directional machine (TDO). An overview of the thin film making process is—raw material in the form of pellets is inserted into an extruder where the material is melted down then the melted material is casted into a film, once the material is in a film state the film is lengthen by a set of rollers in the machine direction stretching machine then the film is widen in the TDO, after the film is stretched to the correct dimensions the film is rolled by a winder into a large roll of film until it unwound and slit into smaller rolls that are packaged and shipped out. This thin film will then be sent out to companies for packing such as food containers or decorative for non-food containers, labels, digital printing, etc. Toray has 3 of these thin film processing lines which produce miles of film daily.

The primary concerns from Team 03’s sponsor Toray were to reduce the downtime of the A6 machine when replacing the TDO chains, to reduce the number of breaks in the chain, and to create a storage area for the chain. These concerns and a set of dimensional and weight restrictions for the cart were the driving design requirements.

Throughout the year Team 03, completed research of structural material, weight of components and structural analysis, and produced various component designs. Once the concept designs were created Team 03 filtered the components down to those that most closely aligned or solved the customer and engineering requirements. Team 03 then validated the design completing a structural analysis on the material and welds, a dynamic analysis for the force required to pull the chain from rest, and engineering analysis was done for the cart. A SolidWorks 3D model was then created for the cart and the team continued making a cross section made out metal as a final prototype as proof of concept. The purpose of this final prototype was to confirm that the chain could smoothly integrate into the railing system. Our goal was to verify that there were no obstructions or disruptions during the curved section.

Comments

Team Name: 2 Chainz (Team 03)

Company Sponsor: Toray Plastics (America)

Document Reference: URI-MCE-CAP-FDR-2024-03

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