Pneumatic Parts Fabricator

 I did this project for First Wave Technologies during the summer.  I was working with the team that was developing generation 2 of their medical device.  In the meantime, they also wanted to do some incremental, fast, low cost improvements to their first generation product.  One of the engineers came up with an idea around using secondary spring forces to increase crushing efficiencies.  We ran designed experiments (DOE’s) and found that his methodology was quite good, and could be optimized.  After optimizing the geometry and materials, I developed a pneumatic parts fabricator that cut silicone rubber square rope to the correct length.  The pneumatic cutter runs at 80 psi, with a electronic timer. I also developed the safety guarding on the machine to ensure no accidents.  The safety guards are hard to see in the pictures because they are made from clear acrylic stock, but they are designed to prevent entry of anything bigger than a pencil into the cutting zone.  The fabricator runs at approx 4000 parts/hour.  I was going to develop a stepper motor driver to automate the feeding of the raw materials, but the machine worked so fast that we completed all the parts in less time than it would have taken me to design and build a stepper-based feeder.   We then found we could use it for other part fabrication, including some parts for increasing strength on strain reliefs for power supplies.