Team Members & Role:

• Alex Carignan
• Jacob Parsons
• Seamus Sullivan
• Dennis Tran

Abstract:

The smart pilot process automatically sorts, classifies, and dispenses skittles based on color. This equipment will be used in graduate manufacturing courses to teach and exercise smart manufacturing practices in line with industry 4.0. This system upgrade has two primary goals, to solve a persistent jamming issue caused by bridging, and to improve the motor placement and tolerances. Both goals need to be met without sacrificing the primary objective of the system, to store and precisely distribute skittles as ordered.

The bridging issue was addressed by designing a dispensing auger to provide mechanical agitation and provide a wider outlet area. To address motor mounting issues, bars of aluminum were chosen to support the motors and auger since they result in significantly less deflection than the original motor mounts. Slots were milled into the bar to assure consistent mounting with minimal tolerance stack up. Serviceability and assembly time were also improved by redesigning the storage hopper so that it could be assembled without tools.