Pneumatics Recycle Can-Crusher
 

Just wanted to spread the words on our pneumatic can-crusher that we built this year.. our team is TEAM 86 and i hope you guys can spread the words on our can-crusher so that we can help disney recycle cans. just bring the empty cans to our pit area and see how the little crusher works. thanks a lot.

Do you have a picture that you can post???

Need... pics....

*drool*

Pictures would be great...

I bet that teams could turn this into a recycling fundraiser!

Still wanting pictures...

/me waits...

I made a pneumatic bridge breaker to test the strength of balsa wood model bridges. I suppose it would work for cans too. We just dial in more PSI until the bridge breaks and the one that broke at the highest PSI is the winner. Do you know of any more acurate way to display the load on the bridge other than PSI reading? We used to just use the good ol' hang books from it method before we built the pneumatic breaker.

About the can crusher, neat idea but I think I would rather spend about 1/3 the time and just step on it.

What?!

How can you say that?!

You are a robotics person, right?

Spend an hour making it, and spend 0.1sec crushing a can to the thickness of a cd case...

I don't see how someone can rather step on a can than that... it's so... primative...

:p

How can I say that? We'll just like I did above. I am definitely a robotics person as you assumed but I don't need a machine just to crush my own soda can. Think about it, you would have to place the can in the machine, flip a switch to turn on the compressor, wait for the air tanks to fill, flip the switch to turn off the compressor, turn a pressure regulator to crush the can, and then release all pressure from the system to get the can out. I would prefer the three simple actions of the "primitve" method: put the can down, step on it, pick the can up. The pneumatic bridge breaker however is very worthwhile because it breaks the wood bridge in a matter of seconds with very little setup. The primitve way of bridge breaking required ten minutes of setup to position, hang, and level a platform and another several minutes to place books on this hanging platform.

Compare.

This thread's about a can crusher, not a bridge breaker (as though a common person needs the ability to apply pressure to a model wooden bridge for stress testing)...

I want pictures, and perhaps to build one of my own...
I think it'd be much worth the effort/time necessary...

That is tall.

Right you are about the topic of this thread. It's just that the devices are similar so I thought I would post it. No pics of the bridge buster because its locked up at school. Although I still think the can crusher is useless, it suppoose it would still be cool to have one. Did you know that they make trashcans with a manual can crusher built into the lid?

Also, this is totally off topic but a thought just came to me about this thing I saw today. It was an industrial scissorlift that drives around for like painting and changing high lightbulbs and stuff and the way it worked was pretty cool. It had a single long hydrallic cylinder going diagonal from one side of the base to the opposite side of the platform atop the scissors. I'm sure we could do the same for a robot with the optional 24" cylinders we were allowed to order. I would draw a picture but I think it's easy enogh to imagine.

uh, foto, i don't suppose it would be that hard to design one oneself. no need for pictures, it would be a pretty simple device, no?

gargargar

I'm feeling too argumentative today...

Yeah, I'm actually rather interested in making one, right now... I doubt the feeling will last too long, though... I'm such a lazy bastard...

you should make one that doees a 12 pack at a time :)

Why even crush the cans in the first place? Just collect them (non-crushed of course) and when you have alot of them, bring them to a store (more likly a grocery store) that have the machines that give you money for recycling your cans. I'm sorry about not being able to give a better description, but amybe someone else knows what I'm talking about.
Anyway the can crusher would be great to use on cans that can not be recyled in this manor. I hate those cans and would love to crush them.

The Engineer's Method
 

Of course if you are crushing cans without mechanical aid, you want to use the following method. I practiced it far too many times after I learned it in college (but only on soda cans).

1) Empty the can

2) Place the can on a reasonably level piece of ground.

3) Stand on one foot on top of the can.

4) While balancing on top of the can, reach down and tap both sides of the can simultaneously.

Standing on the can places it under a fairly uniform compression load. Tapping the can causes the side to deflect in, the deflection causes stresses to rise leading to a buckling failure of the can.

The resulting squashed can is nice and compact. Some cautions, wear shoes that will allow air to escape as the can crushes and be sure that can is empty.

The scissors lift is an elegant concept, but the design effort is non-trivial. The people who design those things are so good at it they make it look easy, but there are many subtle failure modes to trap the unwary. Can it be done? of course, but whether you can do it within our constraints is another issue entirely. For one thing they tend to be very heavy compared to an equivalent telescoping lift.

Just a heads up

Rob does have a point a crushed can is worth nothing in New York. They are worth more if they aren't crushed. They have machines that if you put them in the machine shreds the cans into pieces and you get money but I'm not sure if Florida does this.

Most supermarkets do this in Michigan.
The most annoying sound in the world would have to be the sound of 4 full can crushing machines.

BE(beep)EP(beep) BEE(beep)P BE(beep)EP BEEP BE(beep)EP(beep) BEE(beep)P BE(beep)EP BEEP BE(beep)EP(beep) BEE(beep)P BE(beep)EP BEEP

Whats worse is 3 cans, 2 plastic, and 1 glass going off with 2 more bins of glass sitting in the back cause someone was lazy and didn't do them so you have no more bins for the glass, there are 20 people out in the lobby complaining and you are the only bagger around. That sucks. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee........... /me passes out.

here in michigan you get $0.1 for each can/bottle. Our team did a can drive and made $700 in one day! Thats 7000 cans, or many vans/pickup trucks filled with cans. But, i guess if you live in a place where there are worth nothing you can crush them

man, 10 cents a can. Here in Californi we only get 2.5 cents per can/bottle. No fair.:mad:

Team 84 collects cans. (I think most of them come from our house...heh...we accumulate like 15 large garbage bags of 5c cants each year). We sort them ourselves then haul them up to NY to get your 5c's worth :)

Team 540 motto:

Anything you can do, our robot can do better

And we don't have a pizza making robot because why?

Forget cans, ppbbth... get a pizza making robot!

oooooh *lightbulb over head* for the new season its everyteam make a robot that would normally do a simple basic function we would do and make it do it for us. (im so lazy it would be perfect for me) ideas: homework machine, channel changer, door answerer(robotic butler), mail getter...