Abstracto

Design and Fabrication of Automated Hacksaw Machine

D.V.Sabariananda, V.Siddhartha, B.Sushil Krishnana, T.Mohanraj

The objective of this work is to automate the conventional power hacksaw machine in order to achieve high productivity of work-pieces than the power hacksaw machine using Microcontroller. The automated machine acquires two inputs from the user namely the number of pieces to be cut and the length of each piece that is required to be cut. The inputs are given by the user with the help of a keypad and an LCD display, which will help the user to verify the data given by him. The operator need not measure the length of the work-piece that is to be cut and to load and unload the work-piece from the chuck each time after a piece has been cut. After acquiring the two inputs from the user, the machine automatically feeds the given length of work-piece in to a chuck and starts to cut till the given number of work-pieces has been cut. The machine feeds the work-piece with the help of a conveyor, which is driven by a DC motor and an IR sensor ensures that the feeding stops when the specified length has been reached. A pneumatic cylinder is used for holding the work-piece when cutting operation is done. An AC motor is used to bring about the reciprocating motion required for cutting the work-pieces. There is a self-weight attached with the reciprocating mechanism to provide the necessary downward force required for penetration of hacksaw blade in to the work-piece. When a single piece has been cut, a limit switch will get triggered by the self-weight mechanism, which is sensed by the microcontroller to start the cyclic operation again provided if the specified number of work-pieces has not been cut.