EGR 474 & EGR 450
AUTOMATED MATERIAL HANDLING PROJECT
MARBLE FEEDER
BY: WILLIAM J. EVANS
Project Description:
The overall objective of the project is to fabricate a system that is capable of automatically manufacturing wood and glass marble games. The system will take orders from a personal computer and process the order accordingly.
The object of the marble feeder is to supply the marbles into the given machined slots. Each game has different marble requirements in regards to color and quantity. Some games even give the user a choice of which color marbles will be included with the game.
Solution:
The solution developed was a gravity feeder. The marbles are held in bins above the game. When a game is present, escapements will allow marbles to fall individually down a tube track into the given slots on the game. Each game has two slots for marble storage. All of the games have these slots in the same location so that the marbles can be fed to the same spot regardless of the game type. Some games require that the same color marbles are to be fed to both slots. This problem was over come by creating a track change in the middle of the tracks.
Ladder Logic:
The system is ran off of a soft programmable logic controller. The program for the marble feeder was created in RSLogix 5 Industrial Programming Software by Rockwell Software. The logic was written to serve two purposes. The first purpose was to insure the feeder was working properly. The second purpose was to help the main programer when the time came to integrate the systems together.
Click here for a view of the ladder logic (this is a good sized jpeg and may take awhile to download)
Click here for a view of the internal bits
Click here for a view of the state diagram
Click here for a view of the inputs and outputs
Jeremy Scott -- Low Logic Controls
Tom Johnson -- Vision Inspection System
Jenny Agnello -- G-code and Design
Colin Moore -- Robotics and Project Manager
Hugh Jack -- High Logic and Teacher
For other fixturing and wiring, look through the class of 2000 on the student web page.
Last Revised: Aug 6, 1999
Please e-mail me at evansw@river.it.gvsu.edu
