Design And Development of Air Caster -Mechanical Project
An air caster is a pneumatic lifting device used to move heavy loads on flat, non-porous surfaces. Its operation is similar to a hovercraft, as it uses a thin layer of air as a way to float a very small distance off the ground. Compressed air enters an airbag shaped like a torus, and when the bag is filled it creates an airtight seal with the ground, and forces more air into the center of torus, eventually causing the air to flow over the bag and to raise the load above the ground.
The compressed air is forced under the airbag, pushing it and the load less than a millimeter off the ground.
Material handling equipment are widely used in industry to handle the heavy process equipment’s like boiler, end shield and for movement of heavy materials and machineries.
This dissertation work contributes for the development of a material handling equipment, which is use for movement of heavy loads so, for this application, air caster is designed because of its feature like easily movable heavy loads and positional accuracy in movement.
The present work includes design and modeling of 100kg air caster. The components of air caster like
base plate, load landing plate form, air bag, supporting rings. The selection of the sub components like connectors, nipples, hose pipe, elbows, five way air junction, fasteners are taken standard.
Also 3D components and assembly drawing of air caster have been prepared by using auto desk inventor software.
|Design And Development of Air Caster|
- To develop a flexible material handling equipment for movement of the heavy loads by the application of small effort
- To develop such material handling equipment which does not damage the floor.
- To carried out the design, part modeling and development of 100kg air caster.
Working principle :
Stage-1 Air filling
|Working Of Air caster|
Stage-2 Air bag inflation
Stage-3 Air Escapes and Air film formation
Design Of Air Caster:
The general procedure to solve a design problem is as follows:
1. Need of Air Caster
The air caster is selected for specific job movement application is due to the following reason.
Not availability of crane.
Low floor loading
Least cost movement.
Omni directional movement can achieve.
2. Job Parameters.
Weight -100 kg (gross weight)
Job size - less then 1000x1000mm.
•After following design procedure we got system parameters as……….
Pressure requirement :- 13psi
Base plate:- 1000 x1000x5mm
Load landing platform:-1000x1000x12mm
Centre plate:- dia75mm
Supporting ring:- dia 250mm internal
Air escaping holes in air bag:-dia 1.97mm
Fasteners:- M6 and M8
Elbows, hose pipe, air conveying pipe:-3/8 inch
•As the system is designed for 100kg’s(gross),but after taking performance trial we
got that the system can efficiently works even with 120kg’s(gross).