TECT Power, a turbine part manufacturing facility, currently processes a multitude of turbine blades of varying sizes and dimensions. They currently have a need to remove manual lifting from their processing of their 68K blade which weighs about 45lbs before machining. Their machining fixtures, however, are set in such a way that it is often difficult to place the bulky blades into the machines without straining oneself. Last year a cart was designed to transport the blades from storage to machine 1, a horizontally-oriented mill. However, the design only considered one of many machines. Each of the following machines requires the blade to be reoriented either horizontally or vertically with some angular twist.
   
    This project’s focus is to design a modification to the current cart (or cart design) such that the orientation and 3D position of the blade can be adjusted so that the blade can be loaded and unloaded into the machines down the production line. The new design will focus upon two main sections of the overall design: the arm apparatus responsible for moving the turbine blade into and out of position and the clamping mechanism responsible for holding the blade.

FAMU-FSU College of Engineering

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