Design and construction of an electropneumatic cutter for clay bricks

Abstract

This paper presents the design, simulation and construction of an electropneumatic cutting machine for clay bricks, which allows different sizes of clay bars to be obtained according to programming and thereby increase productivity and minimize the waste of raw material for the production of bricks. Clay brick is a highly consumable product in the construction sector for both single-family and multi-family homes as well as constructions for industrial and business uses. The demand for this type of brick is increasing every year which demands a continuous improvement in the process of obtaining it by the manufacturers in order to efficiently satisfy the market. One of the fundamental phases in the manufacture of the brick is the cutting of the raw material moistened with clay that reaches the cutter as a rectangular continuous bar. Currently, in almost all brick factories in the north of Peru, the cutting is done manually by operators trained specifically for this purpose. It is important that the operators have the necessary experience in order to make the cut that allows to have bricks with the standard dimensions required by the standards for a safe and robust construction. So if market demand exceeds the production capacity of trained operators could generate bottlenecks or production with irregular quality according to the experience and training of shift workers. An alternative solution for the previously described is the brick cutting from an automatic cutting machine. Currently in the market there is a diversity of manually operated brick cutting machines, whose mechanical structure helps the cutting precision of the operator, however it does not solve the bottlenecks that may occur due to increased production demand and ensure a quality homogeneous Additionally, it must be considered that once the cut is made it is necessary to pick up and leave the cut parts in certain trays, which increases the responsibilities and execution time of the operators. So an adequate solution to the problem of lack of specialized human resources for cutting the raw material wetted to obtain clay bricks would be to have an automated machine fully in the cutting phase and thus leave the operators the simplest action and concrete to catch and leave in the specific trays. This paper presents the design and construction of an electropneumatic cutter for clay bricks highly versatile, efficient, flexible, easy to install, stable in its operation and especially with possibilities of being modified and therefore improved or complemented in both hardware and in software. First define the design criteria and the properties that would intervene in the machine. Second, the design is validated by simulation, third, the brick cutting machine is built according to the elaborated plans and finally the operation of the machine is shown.