Mechanical Traffic Cone Unloader

thingiverse

This is part of my team's submission for our design and make class's traffic cone unloader project. The goal of the project was to design a scaled down model of a machine that could place three cones in a diagonal line to close off a lane on a highway. Credit goes to Ellie for helping me with the project. Design criteria: Fit within a box 380mm * 300mm * 180mm No circuitry components (the unloading of the cones must be purely mechanical) Only allowed 2 motors No axial or radial loads No glue W, X, and Y all had to be within set bounds (as shown in the last picture) Traffic cones of set dimensions were provided for us Budget: £85 The key challenge in the design was that there were three things that needed power (the mechanism to drop the cones, the mechanism to ensure the cones are placed in a diagonal line, and the mechanism to move the entire machine forward). I choose to dedicate one motor solely to powering the wheels to better simulate what a machine of the same sort would look like in the real world, built to scale. I also imposed further constraints on my design, namely being that it could have the capability to unload more than 3 cones (with my design the only limit to the amount of cones it can unload is how high they are stacked), and be infinitely repeatable in doing so (the cones won't have to be replaced by a human worker). The first image is a rendering of the finished product without the case, and the second is an assembly drawing. I also made part drawings for each part that I needed to manufacture, describing which machine in the machine shop (CNC, Lathe, 3D printer, Laser Cutter, and many more) would be needed to make the part. Note: The drive belts, bolts, nuts and screws are not shown the the STL file.