Automated Pipe Cutting Machine Design Project

The goal of this project is to fully design an automated continuous pipe cutting machine for a client and financially justify the costs for the machine. We went through two major stages of design review for the machine (PDR and FDR) with these more detailed steps: 

  • Customer Requirements
  • Machine Functional requirements
  • Overview and Selection of Concepts 
  • Detailed Design (CAD)
  • Motor requirements and Calculations
  • Control Software Design
  • User Interface Design
  • Bill of Materials
  • Financial Justifications

The requirements for the machine includes: Cut aluminum pipe into any length from 3-5 ft. Pipe diameter ranges from 1-3 inches with 1/16 inch thick walls. Pipe continuously extrudes at a velocity of 0.60 ft/sec and doesn't stop for the cutting process. The machine needs to accommodate velocity and transport the pipes at extruding speed. After cut, the pipes need to be automatically stacked into 24 inch wide x 24 inch tall boxes in a nested fashion. Boxes have the same depth as the length of the cut pipes and are filled by pipes of the same length and diameter. Last but not least, the machine only requires 1 operator to operate.

We broke the entire cutting and stacking process in to multiple stages, generated different concepts for approaching each stage and used pugh charts to select the best option while keeping risks factors in mind. As an example, one of the stages were to transport and stack the cut pipes into the box. I made hand drawings for the three ideas we had and used pugh chart to decide on the winning method as shown below.

Motor/Sensor Requirements, Calculations and Selection

Detailed CAD Design

We designed the entire machine collaboratively in Solidworks. Here are some photos of the entire machine rendered and samples of more detailed view of the different stages.

Control Software Design, User Interface Design

We made a control software flowchart of the full process of the machine while its running. Using that as a guide, I used windows forms to program an interactable application that illustrates how the machine communicates with the operator.

Bill of Materials, Financial Justification

After determining the costs of manufacturing the machine as designed, we financially justified this project by running a Pro Forma Analysis. The machine is able to reduce labor cost immensely and can be paid back in just 4 months.

Using Format