Royal Canadian Mint plating line transporter retrofit

Abstract

Team ELEVEN was tasked by the Royal Canadian Mint (RCM) to redesign the drive shafts for the coin plating line transporters. These drive shafts are used on the plating line transporters that transfer the batches of coins between chemical baths and operate continuously with a 12 hour maintenance window per week. The RCM is currently using two different drive shafts for each transporter. The unexpected failure of these driveshafts creates an excessive amount of downtime during the plating process, which costs the RCM $1550/hour in lost production. The RCM asked our team to redesign a standardized, more durable driveshaft to reduce the unexpected downtime. To accomplish this, two potential modification to the transporters were developed. First, the flange currently used to connect different sections of the shaft together was redesigned to obtain lower stress concentrations and avoid cracks originating from the welds. Secondly, the transmission system used to transfer power from the motor to the wheels was redesigned to provide power more evenly to the wheels and to standardize the drive shafts.