Recycling Plant
From: Sammy Pinker, Amy Carter, Laura French, Fleet Wood CP School, Fleet,
Lincs
The Project
Our technology project is to make a recycling plant, which will interest
younger children and make them want to recycle cans. Here is a diagram
of what it should look like when we have finished:
How it works
You put your can on the end of the conveyor belt and press start. The
can will start to move along the conveyor belt. A light sensor will see
the can and the can will stop moving. All this time the big flower will
be moving round and round in circles. One of the smaller stems will start
to move towards the can. If your can is steel, a magnet on the stem will
pick it up and then pull it over the edge of the conveyor belt. The magnet
will switch off and drop the can in a box on the other side of the conveyor
belt. However if your can is aluminium it will carry along the conveyor
belt and go down a chute into a different box.
The program
GO Program
Input 329 Proc 10 GO
Procedure defintions
Proc 9 [
Input 6 1 11
Output 1 H
Output 2 H
Time 500
]
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Look for sensor 6 on the barrier. Then do Proc 11. But start the
flower wriggling and the conveyor belt running.
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Proc 11 [
Input 5 1 18
Output 1 L
Output 2 L
Time 30
Output 8 H
Output 7 L
Time 40
]
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This procedure stops the conveyor belt and the wriggle.
It waits 3 seconds and moves the barrier out of the way.
It's looking for sensor 5. When it is activated it will do Proc
18.
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Proc 10 [
R60 [
R60 [
R24 [
Time 10
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This is our long wait procedure
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Proc 18 [
Output 8 L
Output 7 L
Time 20
Output 3 H
Output 4 H
Output 5 L
Time 24
Output 4 L
Output 5 H
Time 24
Output 3 L
Output 5 L
Time 30
Output 1 H
Output 2 H
Time 200
Output 1 L
Output 2 L
Time 20
Output 7 H
Output 8 L
Time 25
Output 7 L
]
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This stops the barrier.
This activates the magnet and moves the magnet branch towards the
tin.
The magnet should touch the tin here.
If it's a steel tin it will be dragged into the chute.
The magnet is switched off.
The belt starts up again. So if the tin wasn't picked up it carries
along the belt to where the belt tilts slightly to one side.
A leaf helps to topple the tin down a different chute.
This puts the barrier back to its original position ready for the
next tin.
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Finished project
The problems
we had
To start with we could not fix the magnet to the stem/arm, so we made
a sort of clamp on the back of the magnet using a piece of wood with three
holes drilled in it. The next problem we had was that we could not get
the light sensor and the light to line up, so we made two little stands
using two cardboard tubes. Then we found the sensor was picking up ambient
light. It took us a long time to come up with the solution, but we decided
to abandon the idea of the sensor altogether and change it to a pressure
pad on a barrier.
When we had put the program into the Console and when the barrier went
forward like it was supposed to, and then hit the other pressure pad.
We thought it was going very well but then it suddely came back and went
out again etc. First of all we had made a mistake in the programming.
Then the barrier was hitting the pressure pad and not releasing it, so
we had to add a time command.
Evaluation
We really enjoyed this project although we had to solve lots of problems
along the way. We were pleased with the final conveyor belt as was Mr
Thompson our headmaster who showed it at a NAAIDT Conference, where everyone
was very impressed with what we'd done.
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