A novel coaxial stack system for petri dish dispenser

Abstract

Traditional stack systems for petri dish dispenser are complex in both structure and control systems, since they are driven by four or more motors. A novel coaxial stack system, with functions of extracting, opening, transferring, closing and inserting of petri dishes, is designed in this paper. It is driven by three motors, resulting in a simple control system. This coaxial stack system consists of a stacking frame, a tray, a step plate, a carrier and a piston. The stacking frame and the carrier are rotating coaxially leading to a smaller space occupation. Mechanical analysis and simulation of the key part of the stack system are described in details. The results of theoretical analyses and actual experiment show that the proposed coaxial stack system can work very well.