Caterpillar Automatic Wire Preparing System
engineeringclinic.arizona.edu
The University of Arizona's Engineering Design Program is a university-industry partnership that allows motivated engineering students to gain impactful real-world experience by tackling company projects over their senior year.
Working with Caterpillar Inc., the scope of our project was to create an automated device that would measure, cut, wind, and bind lengths of wire to a specified length and quantity. Then, drop the prepared wire into a bin for collection and use.
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The automated system designed is housed in a vertical metal frame with a protective screen to shield the user from the operating mechanism. The system uses a standard spool of wire, which is loaded into the top of the device. The wire is threaded through a measuring device and cutting mechanism and attached to a winding drum. A touch screen allows the operator to input the desired length and quantity of the wire sections needed.
My team and I at Design Day with the CAWP System slightly deconstructed for the judges as we were being considered for the Overall Best Design Award. The device automatically measures and spools the wire to within one inch accuracy. It cuts the wire, binds it with tape, and drops the fully prepared wire into a bin for collection at the bottom of the frame. This process repeats autonomously until the desired quantity of each wire length is achieved.
Caterpillar Automatic Wire Preparing (CAWP) System
This is part of the drawing set for my senior design project at the University of Arizona.
The drawings were created by me to match the style of the drawing assignments for the class.
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The drawings were created by me to match the style of the drawing assignments for the class.
This project is the property of Caterpillar.