JCATI CARBON FIBER RECYCLER - CONVEYANCE SYSTEM
JCATI Carbon Fiber Recycler - Conveyance System Sketch
Introduction
The Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation (JCATI) carbon fiber recycler has a conveyance system which is a part of the recycler that brings shredded carbon fiber into the oven. A conveyance system must be engineered to send batches of carbon fiber into the oven in intervals. This will be a controllable system that will be able to work on interval in order to transport whole batches.
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Results
The end result of this project has turned out to be quite successful. Although issues have come about from the hopper of the conveyance system, the overall project is easily integrable into the carbon fiber recycler. This will allow for an improvement in the foundation of the project for future students to work on and improve. The results are valid, and the values do require some tweaking to become better at batching, but this issue also partly stems from a separate portion of the recycler that is not a part of this project.
Speed test results. Conveyor belt move at a range of 4.72 ft/min to 5.19 ft/min which exceeded the minimum requirement of 1 ft/min. The conveyor belt speed is crucial to keeping the system running efficiently.
Conveyance test results. Conveyance passed at the conveyor belt portion, but smaller larger pieces of carbon fiber caused clogging issues at the hopper. This result is crucial to the success of the system as the carbon fiber still needs to go to the oven after the hopper.