The winner of this year’s PneuDrive Student Competition, jointly sponsored by SEW-Eurodrive and Festo, has been announced.
The Stellenbosch University team walked away with top honours after the judging took place in Johannesburg this week. Their glass handling gantry robot came out tops with judges commenting that it was a very good all round project which was backed up with thorough documentation and research.
Winners of the PneuDrive Challenge 2009 from Stellenbosch University [l to r]: Richard Hamman, Theuns Greyvenstein, Thinus Ras, Jacques Visser
The Umshini Khulu Wami (UKW for short), is a versatile and adaptable gantry robot designed to assist in the manufacture and transport of large sheets of glass in and around the factory. The report included a detailed discussion of the float glass process and the difficulty in transporting large sheets of float glass. Several existing solutions were analysed, and UKW was presented as an alternative.
University of the North West took second prize with its waste management system which focused on ‘green businesses’. The project showed great business acumen and covered most aspects of machine building.
The machine was designed to sort bottles according to their material. The system could handle four of the most common materials found in waste eg, glass, plastic, carton and tin. For a machine to determine the type of element, it had to perform a number of tests by checking the property of every item as all elements have unique characteristics, for instance the magnetism of ferrous metals and lower density of carton.
University of KwaZulu-Natal came in third place with its design for a cricket bat hardening production system. Judges commented that the project was very innovative and showed high levels of complexity.
The design was concerned with the handling and processing of sports equipment in an industrial factory where cricket bats are made. The project involves developing an automated machine to surface harden the face of a cricket bat, while transporting the bat to the next stage of processing.
The competition winners won an all expenses paid trip to Germany and the winning university will be receiving R100 000 worth of SEW-Eurodrive and Festo equipment.
The competition will be run again in 2010. Information on the 2010 Challenge will be available later this year.
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![Winners of the PneuDrive Challenge 2009 from Stellenbosch University [l to r]: Richard Hamman, Theuns Greyvenstein, Thinus Ras, Jacques Visser](articles/SA Instrumentation & Control - Published by Technews/C13101.jpg)
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