Multidisciplinary Senior Design Project Readiness Package Project Title: Plastic Bottle Rope Machine for Developing Countries Project Number: (assigned by MSD) P18432 Primary Customer: (provide name, phone number, and email) Erinold Frederick (509 3877 5542 or 509 44 83 1396) [email protected]) and Agronom Franz (509 36 05 9618) in Cap Haitien Haiti (Kreyol speakers), Sarah Brownell, [email protected], 330-6434, Project Teams P18416 Arborloo and P18485 Roofing (who need bottle string) Sponsor(s): (provide name, phone number, email, and amount of support) MSD Preferred Start Term: Fall 2017 Faculty Champion: (provide name and email) Sarah Brownell Other Support: Project Guide: (assigned by MSD) RIT – Kate Gleason College of Engineering Multidisciplinary Senior Design Project Readiness Package Template Revised Spring 2016
Project Title: Plastic Bottle Rope Machine for Developing CountriesProject Number:(assigned by MSD) P18432
Primary Customer:(provide name, phone number, and email)
Erinold Frederick (509 3877 5542 or 509 44 83 1396) [email protected]) and Agronom Franz (509 36 05 9618) in Cap Haitien Haiti (Kreyol speakers),Sarah Brownell, [email protected], 330-6434, Project Teams P18416 Arborloo and P18485 Roofing (who need bottle string)
Sponsor(s):(provide name, phone number, email, and amount of support)
MSD
Preferred Start Term: Fall 2017
Faculty Champion:(provide name and email)
Sarah Brownell
Other Support:Project Guide:(assigned by MSD)
Sarah Brownell 7/14/17Prepared By Date
Received By Date
RIT – Kate Gleason College of EngineeringMultidisciplinary Senior Design
Project Readiness PackageTemplate Revised Spring 2016
Project Information
* Overview:
According to the World Bank, Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas and one of the poorest in the world[1]. Most Haitians live on less than $1.25 a day and often only one meal a day, with fresh water in short supply[2]. Plagued by garbage-filled streets and the spread of diseases such as the waterborne illness cholera, the average life expectancy is 55 years for women and 53 years for men[3]. Natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, landslides, droughts, and floods are very common in Haiti, further decreasing their quality of life. Hurricane Matthew last fall and the 2010 earthquake devastated thousands of homes, and much of the rubble still remains in the streets of Haiti. Approximately 172,000 Haitian people are living in tents or make-shift shelters, where danger from floods and other disasters is much higher[2].
Poor recycling and waste management services have resulted in a massive buildup of plastic waste, primarily from discarded bottles (figure 1). This problem was exacerbated further when international relief started to file into Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Reduced employment opportunities for local Haitians and loss of revenue for the country were results of this extra outside aid. In an effort to clean the areas and reduce breeding sites for mosquitos, local residents often burn the bottles, releasing toxic smoke in the vicinity of homes. There is ample opportunity to use the raw material for a wide range of applications through recycling/upcycling in the country.
Figure 1: Bottle waste in Haiti
Current recycling efforts in Haiti consist of companies that pay a small sum for any bottles that Haitians collect[4]. They drive by and pick up bags of bottles at random intervals. However, with the price of oil low, the collected bottles have also dropped in value and the Haitians receive less money for their efforts. Additionally, as bottles are shipped overseas to be recycled, a majority of the value ends up in other countries’ economies instead of Haiti’s. This project aims to increase the value of the bottles by preparing them to be repurposed and recycled in various
RIT – Kate Gleason College of EngineeringMultidisciplinary Senior Design
Project Readiness PackageTemplate Revised Spring 2016
forms. This project will not only increase the value of the bottles by using them for something constructive, but will also bolster Haiti’s economy with their worth. See figure 2 for a roadmap of possible plastic bottle projects for developing countries identified in spring 2016 by a team of students in the Design Project Leadership (DPL) course.
Figure 2: Possible bottle uses and the highlighted path for this team from the DPL Plastic Bottle Team. Drawing by Drew McNulty.
Last year, MSD teams worked on projects designed for recycling bottles along two of these paths. MSD team P178433 designed a machine to shred bottles as the first step in the process of melting and reforming them into new products. This year, teams P18433 and P18434 will continue to develop this path. Another MSD team, P178432, worked on a design to make string or rope for use in tying down materials for transport, arts and crafts, concrete reinforcement, or fishing nets, etc. The mechanical process of making string or rope can be operated on human power and therefore potentially can provide a low investment cost way for small entrepreneurs to give useful life to the wasted resource of plastic bottles--ideal for Haiti. Your MSD team is tasked with continuing the work on making bottle string to include refining or developing new processes and tools to prepare the bottles (clean, re-shape, etc.), cut them into string (figures 3 and 4) and then use the string to create rope.
RIT – Kate Gleason College of EngineeringMultidisciplinary Senior Design
Project Readiness PackageTemplate Revised Spring 2016
Last year’s team developed a crank powered bottle rope braiding machine based on a horn gear design from the 1800s (figure 5), but never got it to be fully operational.
Figure 5: Team P17432’s Horn Gear Rope Braiding Machine
They also explored making rope by twisting the string. The twisting machine had some success and was sent to Haiti for stakeholders to experiment with it (figure 6).
RIT – Kate Gleason College of EngineeringMultidisciplinary Senior Design
Project Readiness PackageTemplate Revised Spring 2016
Figure 6: Team P17432’s Rope Twisting Machine
The goal of this new project team will be to learn from and expand upon the experiences of the previous team to develop a small scale rope manufacturing system (either braided or twisted). Material choices for the tools should be matched to their use in terms of strength, durability, cost and weight. The team must also explore how to make the rope longer than the length of string that can be pulled from a single bottle, how to keep the rope from unravelling, and how to produce quantities of rope quickly and easily with quick change over of spools/strings and easy machine set up procedures.
Experimentation will be required to determine the appropriate string dimension for rope, number of strings, and if the individual bottle strings need to be joined into continuous strings for rope or not. The resulting process must be able to be replicated in Haiti and other developing countries without (m)any imported materials and with minimal use of skilled labor. It must also be designed to be a viable manufacturing process—fast and easy to use, safe and ergonomic.
Resources
Team P17432’s website is available here: https://edge.rit.edu/edge/P17432/public/Home
The DPL team created a number of documents including research on the PET material and applicable processes which can be viewed on edge here and in their public directory: http://edge/edge/R16401/public/Home Twisted Rope Machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINRkRf3aFs Horn Gear Maypole Braiding Machine: https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrB8p2kC2lZZCUAkQMunIlQ?p=horn%20gear%20rope%20braiding&fr=yhs-mozilla-002&fr2=p%3As%2Cv%3Ai%2Cm%3Apivot&hsimp=yhs-002&hspart=mozilla#id=6&vid=27c67ea7f32ead4dbbe9d572eadae87a&action=view
RIT – Kate Gleason College of EngineeringMultidisciplinary Senior Design
Project Readiness PackageTemplate Revised Spring 2016
Reduces plastic bottle pollutionUpcycles plastic bottle waste into rope
Empowers CommunitiesCreates jobs in HaitiBuilds community involvementRequires low levels of operator skill or educationSafe for the operator to use (minimize sharps, pinch points, entanglement, burn risk)Assembled with basic hand tools and welding
Economically ViableGenerates a rope product with useful application/market in HaitiGenerates longer rope (>15m)Rope does not unravel easilyMore profitable than simply shipping bottles for recycling to the USProduction cost less than $0.08/m (labor and materials)Generates revenue in Haiti (not in the US or other countries)Operates as a financially sustainable enterprise (after initial capital investment)Fast change over and easy to use Easy to repair with locally available partsLow maintenance and repair costs
Works with developing country infrastructure Lightweight (in parts) for transport to remote locationsMinimal need for electrical powerPrioritizes existing local materials and processes for tool construction Withstands natural disasters
Number of hand tools needed to assemble manufacturing line # 6 4% (by cost) of machine materials imported % <25 <10Weight of heaviest part Lbs. <50 <35Parts fit in flatbed truck# of skilled operations to # 3 1
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Project Readiness PackageTemplate Revised Spring 2016
build manufacturing line# of jobs created for one rope line # >2 >4# of unprotected pinch points # 0# of burn hazards # 0# of sharps hazards # 0% of label and glue removed % 90 95Force applied to plastic N 720 900 Burcham recommended cut forcePercent of bottle used (wt/wt) % >80 >90Time to prep bottle for string (form, remove label, cut ends) s <60 <45String breaks per bottle # 1 0Range of string diameters Mm 2-4 1-6Variability of string diameter Mm 0.7 <0.5Time to turn bottle into string s <45 <30
String Width mm 2-5 3-4Large enough to be durable, small enough to be flexible
Perceived cleanliness of rope
Rope Diameter [up] mm 8 10Typical rope size, diverse applications
Total number of strands in rope [up] # 12 34
Calculated from diameter, string width, string thickness, packing efficiency
Final rope length m >15 >20Breaking strength kg 500 1000 Check feasibility of thisHuman power Input [down] W 150 100
assumes gear ratio of 4:1 Check human capabilities
Ratio of length lost per length of string [down] m/m 0.05 0.05
Estimated from ropewalk instructions
Rope Output Feed Rate [up] m/min 1 ∞ Estimated from feasibilityVariability in string size over string average diameter [down] mm 3 0Rope production cost $/m <0.10 <0.08 Materials, energy, laborEstimated annual repair costsRecycling rate Bottles/min >1 >2Income / operating Expenses Ratio >1 >1.5ROI on equipment Years <3 <5Income from rope / Ratio >1 >2
RIT – Kate Gleason College of EngineeringMultidisciplinary Senior Design
Project Readiness PackageTemplate Revised Spring 2016
income from standard recycling
* Constraints:Can be transported by pickup or flatbed truck and moved into and out of the truck by hand in HaitiLow operator skillsUse local tools and processesProfitable/ViableWithstand disastersEasy to repairLow maintenance and repair costsAssembled with basic hand tools and/or weldingSafe
* Project Deliverables:Minimum requirements:● All design documents (e.g., concepts, analysis, detailed drawings/schematics, BOM, test
results)● working prototype● technical paper● poster● All teams finishing during the spring term are expected to participate in ImagineRIT
Additional required deliverables:● Low literacy user instructions● Rope strength testing● 3 min video
† Budget Information:$500 from MSD
* Intellectual Property:None anticipated
RIT – Kate Gleason College of EngineeringMultidisciplinary Senior Design
Project Readiness PackageTemplate Revised Spring 2016
Project Resources
† Required Resources (besides student staffing):Describe the resources necessary for successful project completion. When the resource is secured, the responsible person should initial and date to acknowledge that they have agreed to provide this support. We assume that all teams with ME/ISE students will have access to the ME Machine Shop and all teams with EE students will have access to the EE Senior Design Lab, so it is not necessary to list these. Limit this list to specialized expertise, space, equipment, and materials.
Faculty list individuals and their area of expertise (people who can provide specialized knowledge unique to your project, e.g., faculty you will need to consult for more than a basic technical question during office hours)
Initial/date
Environment (e.g., a specific lab with specialized equipment/facilities, space for very large or oily/greasy projects, space for projects that generate airborne debris or hazardous gases, specific electrical requirements such as 3-phase power)
Initial/date
Equipment (specific computing, test, measurement, or construction equipment that the team will need to borrow, e.g., CMM, SEM, )
Initial/date
Tensile testing machineMaterials (materials that will be consumed during the course of the project, e.g., test samples from customer, specialized raw material for construction, chemicals that must be purchased and stored)
Initial/date
Lots of bottles…
OtherInitial/date
† Anticipated Staffing By Discipline:Indicate the requested staffing for each discipline, along with a brief explanation of the associated activities. “Other” includes students from any department on campus besides those explicitly listed. For example, we have done projects with students from Industrial Design, Business, Software Engineering, Civil Engineering Technology, and Information Technology. If you have recruited students to work on this project (including student-initiated projects), include their names here.
Dept. # Req. Expected ActivitiesBMECEEE
RIT – Kate Gleason College of EngineeringMultidisciplinary Senior Design
Project Readiness PackageTemplate Revised Spring 2016
ISE 1 1-2 on manufacturing process: production system design, tool and process design, safety, ergonomics, engineering economy, project management, manufacturing engineering
ME 4 2 prepping and making string, 2 on rope: 3D CAD, machining, machine elements, stress analysis, fatigue analysis, tool, jig and fixture design, materials selection, GD&T
Other
RIT – Kate Gleason College of EngineeringMultidisciplinary Senior Design
Project Readiness PackageTemplate Revised Spring 2016
