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K. Konkatti and G. D. Bassan
1.3 Design of Star Wheel
Star Wheel of the Spoon Bundling Machine can be considered as the heart of this
machine. Without this, every other component is of no use. Star Wheel will be
operated by stepper motor and the gear box mechanism. Main aim of the Star Wheel
is to carry the bundle of the spoon from the storage to glue and then from glue
mechanism to the exit of that bundle. As it has been known that Star Wheel will be
operated by stepper motor and gear box mechanism its rotation per minute will be
very less. As the star wheel has to rotate in terms of pulses provided by the stepper
motor its tangential velocity will also be very less [4]. The material selected for the
star wheel is aluminum alloy instead of stainless steel. This is because food glue
sometimes may fall on the surface of this star wheel which can cause corrosion
if stainless steel is used. So, that is the main reason for selecting Aluminum alloy
instead of the Stainless Steel. The design of star wheel is shown in Fig. 2.
It has been known that the star wheel has to be paused or stop at fixed point for
fixed interval of time. So it is assumed that, Tangential Velocity of the Star Wheel
will be V = 30 mm/s and Rotation per Minute, N = 1.5 rpm. The calculation of the
diameter of the star wheel is done using Eq. 1.
V = π × D ×
N
60
(1)
So, the diameter of the star wheel i.e. = 382.16 mm.
Therefore, the diameter of the star wheel is taken as 400 mm. Below the star wheel
a load bearing is placed to bear the load of the star wheel [5].
Fig. 2 Star wheel of the machine