Conveyor Problems and Update

As expected, many unexpected problems have presented themself with the conveyor.

Once the PVC rollers and the L-Bar configuration was fully assembled, we realized that the torque required to rotate the threaded rod connected to the drive roller, was much higher than expected. The rod is connected to a rubber bung, therefore as the rod rotates the bung rotates as well. The bung is then tightly fitted into the drive roller, which would in turn rotate the roller. We noticed that although the threaded rod rotated, there was some slipping within the bung and therefore the rod did not efficiently transfer the rotation. Furthermore, we noticed that even when the roller rotated, the friction between the roller and belt was low which caused slipping between the roller and the belt.

To conquer these problems, we've designed a new setup. This design is based off the premise that rotating the roller directly is much easier then rotating the rod -> bung -> roller. Our new design extends the drive roller past the Lbar to make room for attaching both hubs and gears to the roller. The gears on the roller are attached to a gear on the motor shaft in order to increase torque. Furthremore, a new geared motor was purchased to amplify torque further. The updated setup is similar to the following figure.

We believe that the amplified torque and the direct attachment to the roller will make the belt move as we originally planned. The parts have been ordered and will be implemented as soon as possible.

The next step was to solve the roller to belt friction issue. We decided to try and add a layer of velcro on the drive roller and test this out. The belt motion was much smoother with the velcro roller. We will be putting more velcro on the roller in the upcoming days.

Finally, we previously glued the belt together which after testing eventually wore out and ripped. There was also an issue of the belt thickness at the connection point being too high therefore making it hard to roll smoothly around the last conveyor roller. Instead we decided to stitch the belt. This has proven to work much better. The following figures show the ripped belt and the newly stitched belt #GoodJobAniqah