This was a project that I did a lot of work on helping a friend out with an a-level project. The basic concept was an automatic glass bottle sorter. The idea was to get more reliable sorting done at the earliest point in the recycling process. It was also intended to be cool to watch and therefore an incentive for people to recycle. The system worked on 2 levels and sorted into 3 colours. It only worked with cylindrical glass bottles as it relied on them rolling down a slope. The system worked using a mixture of mechanical and electronic sorting. The bottle would roll down the first ramp into the reading zone. It would then hit a micro-switch which would activate the RGB colour sensor. This would read the bottle colour and set the pneumatic actuators so that the flap over the correct door would open. The bottle reader would then lift and tip the bottle onto the lower ramp while stopping any previously lined up bottles from pushing past. The bottle would then fall onto the lower ramp and through the appropriate open door into a bin which sat beneath. The reader then returned to its original position this would cause the next bottle would fall into place and the cycle would repeat.
I had to stop helping my friend out with this project when the final deadlines started to approach as I had to continue with my own work and as a result it was never complete this was a shame as the entire mechanism worked beautifully and we got the control circuit working fine on the test boards. There was just not enough time to put it all together.
No comments:
Post a Comment