De-Palletizer for Stacked Rubber Strands (“Wig-Wag”)

In this project, we will solve a challenging material handling problem encountered by our industry partner in a labour-intensive step of their production process, which will help compensate for current and future personnel shortages and enable expansion of production. The main challenges in this project include object detection, grasping and manipulation of heavy material, and integration into an existing production process that is currently heavily dependent on manual labour and expertise.

The material to be handled in this process is a thick, wide rubber strand that arrives at the station in a folded pile on a palette, called wig-wag, with one irregularly-shaped free end exposed at the top of the stack. This project requires the successful detection, grasping, movement, and insertion of the irregular free end of the wig-wag into an existing machine to continue the production process. There are several key challenges in this project related to the detection and handling of the wig-wag.

First, the shape, position, and orientation of the free end of the wig-wag must be detected, which will require either the modification of an earlier production step to include labelling or advanced optical sensing (e.g., laser, infrared, video) to sense it directly.

Faculty Supervisor:

William Melek

Student:

Partner:

AirBoss

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

University of Waterloo

Program: