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Plane in the Sky

JCATI

CARBON FIBER RECYCLER

INTRO

JCATI is a system of machines to process and recycle strips of carbon fiber originating from decommissioned aircraft wings.  This process begins by taking the carbon fiber strips and delaminating them through placing the strips into the crushing wheel to delaminate strip.  After the delaminating process the strip is then fed into the shredder where the delaminated material is broken down into small chips.  With the material at a smaller state, it is then conveyed into an oven.  At this point the oven will heat up the broken-up material to a desirable temperature to evaporate any resin within the broken-up material.  After the carbon fiber has undergone its cycle, the carbon fiber will ready to be repurposed into new material. 

The scope of this project will be designing an appropriate gear ratio for the drive train system. This new design would increase the torque from 2000 lb-ft to 2500 lb-ft.  This would allow for the delamination of the carbon fiber strips to easier to be shredded

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Fig 1: Initial sketch

RESULTS

The now manufactured JCATI system was a success with the modification of adding dual crushing wheels and increasing the drive train ratio.  It was able to meet the requirements of the power output of the drive train must be capable of transferring 2500 ft-lbs to the crushing wheels, the gears and sprockets will provide the proper drive train ratio, must stay in alignment with existing system flow, and must be able to operate at a minimum feed rate of 1 foot per minute. Unfortunately, the drive train was not able to complete the requirement of being able to continuously feed carbon fiber strips without ceasing. However, the improvements from this new design allowed the crushing wheels to delaminate untouched material before ceasing.  During the Torque test, it was observed that the 2500 ft-lbs of torque is more than enough to crush the material.  Under investigation of the issue of ceasing, it was discovered the electric motor cannot provide the desired horsepower at a low rpm of 418 rpm. 

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Fig 2: Final Assembled Drive Train

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MOTIVATION

This project was motivated by the need to improve upon the already existing JCATI system.  The current drive train system will need to operate with more power transferred to the crushing wheels.

Final Presentation

Part 1

Part 2

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