Gearbox Validation Rig
Project Introduction
I interned at Creator, Inc over the summer of 2018. Creator operates a restaurant in San Francisco with robots that make made -to-order gourmet hamburgers. The robot uses modular Geneva-driven paddle conveyors to move the burger through the robot. Newly-manufactured gearboxes needed to be broken-in and validated such that they could be reliably swapped onto our robots should existing modules fail. I designed a validation strategy as well as a rig to test these gearbox modules.
Validation Process and Rig
The purpose of the validation process was to ensure that gearboxes under-test were able to steadily supply the required torque with a reasonable current draw. The rig used hysteresis clutch brakes to provide a smooth transmission of the desired torque to individual couplers. Gearboxes could easily be loaded in and out of the rig using a a guide-rail and removable backplate design.