Industrial wire cutting machine: A senior capstone design project

Abstract

Manual wire cutting with poorly designed manual wire cutters presents many work-related health issues for electricians. Repetitively cutting wires with such tools can result in injuries to the hands and wrists of the individual. Additionally, manual wire cutting can be inaccurate and is time consuming, which can represent a loss of revenue from the time utilized in the process. Automatic wire cutting machines help to significantly reduce the number of occupational injuries, and improve the accuracy and efficiency of wire cutting. There are a variety of industrial wire cutting and stripping machines on the market. Unfortunately, these machines are expensive, and many electrical contractors and small technical shops cannot afford them. As a result, old and outdated automatic wire cutting machines are widely utilized by technicians, manufacturing workers and electrical contractors. These machines are not very efficient and tend to be slower in operation and are subject to technical issues such as jamming. As a result of empirical observations and personal experiences with manual wire cutters and old automatic wire cutting machines, a team of students in the EET Senior Capstone Design Project course at Kennesaw State University embarked on the design of a cost-effective industrial wire cutting machine with the goal of improving productivity, performance, accuracy, ease of use, and maintainability while at the same time reducing the cost of manufacturing such a machine. Their design utilizes a spool of wire of the type in automation assembly plant processes, an Arduino microcontroller, and other hardware components such as an LCD screen, push buttons, power supply, motor driver, servo motor, DC motor and DC-to-DC step-down converters. C/C++ functions were developed for the software portion of the project. This paper presents preliminary results from their design project.