For my Senior Design project, my team worked with Cascade Steel Rolling Mill (CSRM) located in McMinnville, Oregon. I was the Technical Manager and my role was to help maintain the teams progress towards specification goals and to ensure the components could interface with each other and the cold shear currently in use at CSRM.

My team was tasked with designing a device that could automatically sweep away pieces of rebar that get stuck under the cold shear/clamp mechanism. Currently, a technician has to manually sweep these pieces away which is a safety hazard and a manufacturing pinch point.

Our final design had to sweep 15kg of rebar, 1.5m in 5s. I designed this system in SolidWorks and then worked with my team to build a half-scale proof of concept. The main design feature is that this sweeper only requires two linear actuators to push the rebar, shown in the Half-Scale Prototype image. The Sweeper Track image shows the slot system the sweeper rides in which allows the sweeper to rotate out of the way of rebar when not in use.