Auto – Roll Punching Machine using Four Bar Mechanism

Hello all (for a change)... Well I’ve successfully maintained my record of not keeping my New Year resolution that I’ll be writing atleast one blog per month. I knew it’d be difficult as my laziness would come in the way but to be honest, I was extremely busy for the past two months that it would’ve been impossible for me to write a blog. But now I’m free.

If you’ve been wondering what kept me so busy or what that weird title of this blog means, then it’d be time to tell you that it’s the title of my Mini Project and that’s what has kept me busy.

Yes you guessed it right. This blog is dedicated to my Mini Project. Don’t feel bored for I’ll see to it that I make my story as brief and as interesting as possible considering there are people from various streams who may trip on this blog.

Being Third Year Mechanical Engineering students and in a college that falls under Anna University Chennai, we have this paper called Design and Fabrication Project (essentially a Mini Project) that would fetch us 100 marks. No other Department has a project in the Third year. There too we had something to show off, we thought. But as time progressed, we realized that it was not going to be a path full of roses and the other Departments have been lucky not to have a project.

Once the sem started, we were instructed that we have to form batches of four (as we wished) and do a project that would involve parameters like drawings, design and fabrication complete with a report. I was clueless as to what I am going to do. Rajesh Kumar, a former class topper and a good friend, asked me if we could team up and I readily agreed. Lakshmi Narasiman was a natural choice for my team and so was Arun Nair. So we were through with the first stage – forming teams.

Next we were supposed to decide on the title of the project. This was the toughest part. Since none of us had any pre-formed ideas in our minds, we were skeptical as to what were going to do. Our staffs suggested that we should look in the net but most of the projects that we came across online were too far-fetched for a mini project. One or two videos that we saw in YouTube attracted our attention and we liked a particular mechanism called Four Bar Mechanism which was used in an Inventor Pump. Since we had also learnt about this mechanism, we decided that we must have it in our project. Now the problem was to give an application to this mechanism. I initially thought of using it for a piston pump but later dropped that idea. After some discussions, we decided to use it for punching. But a mere punching machine sounded too ordinary to us and we decided that we must add something innovative to make our project more appealing. But time was running out. We had only 3 days to finalize the title of our project.

It was a Sunday and I was wondering how the heck ideas are born. I simply could not think of anything. I was fiddling with my film roll camera and EUREKA!! I got an idea just at that moment. In those cameras, after a picture was shot, the roll automatically moves to the next slot. I thought of using the same principle in our project too. If we were going to punch something, then it would certainly be sheet metal which is available mostly in the form of rolls. So why not do the project in such a way that the entire roll is loaded into our machine and once the punching is done, the sheet automatically rolls to the next slot to be punched. All my teammates liked this idea and thus the title Auto – Roll Punching Machine using Four Bar Mechanism was born.

Now we needed to find a Guide for our project and we were all unanimous in our decision to seek Jayanth sir as our Guide, for he was the one who had taught us Four Bar Mechanism.

We needed to find a suitable mechanism to be introduced into our machine for the auto roll operation. This wasn’t an easy task. Each one came up with their own suggestions but every idea had a flaw or two. Finally a look at our seniors’ projects gave us the idea of using Geneva Mechanism as it would be the most effective one.

The next task was Design, arguably the toughest part. Since I had the images playing out in my mind, it wasn’t all that difficult but it still required 6 hours of work in Solid Works software. Once this initial design was done, Arun Nair, the Design expert that he is, took upon the task of improving it and developing it further.

Next we needed to fabricate the entire project. For this too, Arun Nair came in handy as his dad knew many machining shops at SIDCO. It was mainly due to the invaluable help rendered by Mr. Madhavan Nair, Arun’s dad, and Mr. Ravi, our Lathe operator, that we were able to fabricate this project. Once the work at the lathe shop was complete, we brought it to our college, where the rest of the work was done. Lakshmi Narasiman, most definitely the best student Automobile expert that I had ever known, chipped in with his welding skills and the project neared its completion.

I took upon the job of preparing an extensive project report as I was fairly good at it and Rajesh too chipped in with his Design calculations. In between, we also had a review with our HOD, but we were able to clear it without any glitch as we were confident of what we were doing.

The finishing stage posed a big problem as our machine was still not punching the sheet but it was only making a dent. This tensed us all as our project would be termed as a failure if the punch did not happen. Finally with some re-welding and restructuring done, our machine PUNCHED a hole in the sheet. It was our City Moment of Success. At last three months of hard work (one and a half months of real hard work) had borne fruit. We were overjoyed and the only work left was to prepare PowerPoint and present our project before the External. We were fairly well prepared and the Presentation went well. No matter how hard the External tried to knock us of our feet, we were able to deal with him and answer his questions. Finally he got us on a simple Load calculation that we missed and this gave him some satisfaction. But we were good enough to calculate the load at that very instant and give him the result. He was finally convinced and liked our project. He gave us an A++ grade.

Finally a feeling of contentment and that of having achieved something crept in. After all it was our own innovative idea that has taken shape. Barring one or two other batches, no other batch worked on their own ideas for their respective projects and this gave us an additional satisfaction. It was then that we felt that we were at an advantage compared to other departments for we knew exactly what has to be done for our Final year Projects and have the experience of Mini Project to back it up.

Also I’d like to mention some of the other projects which I liked: Arjun’s “Walking Machine using Theo Jansen Mechanism”, Arun Menon’s “Hydraulic Suspension” and Sarrvesh’s “Stirling Engine” (it was impressive even if it didn’t work).

That’s it for this blog. Please do check out the Video of this project. I’m sure this blog and the video would be of some help atleast to the students approaching their Mini Projects and Final Year Projects.

Your comments on this blog and our project are welcome. Also try recommending this blog to any student seeking help on the topic of their Projects or Mini Projects.

This blog is dedicated to my batchmates/ teammates – Arun Nair, Rajesh and Lakshmi Narasiman.

Hoping to write another blog soon.

Until then, its bye from me…