DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

• The Objective: Industrial automation project to design, develop and monitor “Automatic bottle filling system using PLC” with low operational and maintenance costs and lower power consumption. This technology has vast applications in many food and beverage industries. A prototype has been developed to illustrate the process of automatic filling of bottles.
• Concept: The appliance uses a motion detector sensor; a PLC controller for filling the bottle; and a conveyor system using a DC Motor. Ladder logic, the most widely used and accepted language, has been used for PLC programming. 

Benefit to society: This machine can enhance productivity and accuracy by automating and expediting the filling and packaging process for small scale industries under the Make in India Scheme.

• The Objective: Consumers demand variety and aesthetically designed products in this age of stiff competition. MSME need to respond quickly to the customers’ needs while providing variety of products. Manually achieving Minor variations and consistency in shades of colour of products is a challenging task. The main objective of this project is to improve the efficiency, increase the productivity rate, reduce errors and eliminate human efforts during the process of mixing different colour liquids.
• Concept: Our user-friendly PLC based system is designed to automate the process of producing colours of different shades in specific ratios. The list with codes of input colours is available and the user can create any colour combination of his choice on HMI or select pre-defined output colours.

Benefit to society: This economical and portable automatic colour mixing plant with minor adaptations and customisation promises to impact many industrial sectors. 

• The Objective: Contributing to public health and environmental protection by preventing adverse discharges into the water bodies was the objective behind development of the water filtering system. This cost-effective and sustainable method of filtration mitigates contamination and health risks associated with wastewater by extracting pollutants, removing toxicants, neutralising coarse particles, killing pathogens and allows for multiple layers of treatment before water is discharged into the environment.
• Concept: The devise consists of a reservoir tank that holds untreated water; a PLC controlled pump to operate the solenoid valves and multiple layers of micro filters like sand, pebbles, filter membranes etc. After sedimentation process, the water is disinfected by adding Alum, Sodium Bi sulphate, chlorine etc. Level sensors are affixed to check the total amount of waste-water treated.   

Benefit to society: Industries that have large water consumption and discharge like Food/Beverage, Power, and machine manufacturing and chemical industries can treat industry effluents from water and recycle it for further use. This technology can further be adapted to treat urban as well as individual domestic wastewater treatment for communities and townships.

• The Objective: The versatility of 3-D Printers is unquestionable but their Prohibitive cost has been a limitation. This inspired us to design a 3D printer that allows prototype fabrication with minimal material in a cost-effective way.
• In the industry, products are made cheaply with mass production by using techniques such as injection moulding to ensure there is no material wastage. These moulds are far too expensive. 3D printing allows creation of new products by constructing low-cost prototypes as well as production of replacement/ spare parts at low costs.
• Concept: 3D printing or additive manufacturing is a process of making 3-dimensional solid objects from a digital design file. In an additive process, successive layers of material are built using 3D modelling to create an object.

Benefit to society: 3D printing technology is widely used in Medical sciences, aerospace and aviation industries for manufacturing precision components and implants.

• The Objective: Go-karting as a popular hobby is growing but is limited to a few urbanscapes due to high investments in equipments and infrastructure. This project endeavours to explore cheaper technology for manufacturing go-karts and increase its outreach to 3-tier towns.
• Highlights of the project: Conventional engine can be replaced by a bio-fuel or an integrated fuel and electric engine (hybrid engine) to lower running cost of existing go-kart and importantly minimize environmental pollution.

• The Objective: The prime motive is to construct a reliable, economical and an efficient solar-electric car for daily commute that runs on free renewable solar energy.
• Concept: The noiseless, pollution-free electrically driven vehicle uses Photovoltaic cells to convert solar energy into electrical energy through quantum mechanical transitions and ensures zero emissions with minimum maintenance.

Benefit to society: This project addresses the need of the transportation industry to reduce pollution and emission of green-house gasses that has resulted in health hazards and global warming.

• The Objective: Worldwide, motor vehicles emit over 900 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) each year, accounting for more than 15 percent of global fossil fuel-emissions. This project aims to present an alternate solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reverse the impact of global warming.
• Highlights of the project: Conventional engine can be replaced with a bio-fuel or an integrated fuel and electric engine (hybrid engine) to lower running costs and importantly minimize environmental pollution.

Benefit to society: Electric cars are 100 percent eco-friendly, do not emit toxic gases or smoke into the environment and run without any noise pollution.

• The Objective: Water crisis in looming in the near future and water pollution is posing and alarming situation. The project is developed to remove debris, plastic waste & garbage from water bodies that harm aquatic ecosystem & human life and to preserve and clean the natural water sources.
• Highlights of the project:
  • The present invention discloses a lake cleaning machine which comprises of a geared cycle that transmits rider’s cycling effort to propel the system on water. This machine has a capability of running at five different speeds as per the condition of water. If the water is densely polluted, the speed can be increased with the help of a gear system.
  • It is a simple and cost effective mechanism which can be used by any person, skilled or unskilled, for cleaning the water bodies and simultaneously benefitting the physical health through exercise. The rider can manually collect floating garbage from both left and right ends using a hand controlled light weight basket attached to the handle. The purpose of water baskets, fixed on both sides of machine, is to dump the collected garbage by rider. Further, the forward motion of machine helps in automatically trapping significant amount of floating garbage in a perforated tray and then dumping it into the collection bins.

Benefit to society: The lake cleaning machine is a suitable solution to clean the lakes using human- effort in an efficient and eco-friendly manner.

• The Objective: Purpose of this project is to manufacture an off-road vehicle capable of reaching remote uneven terrain safely and comfortably.
• Highlights of the project: The compact ATV with a tight turning radius is capable of maneuvering on the tightest of spaces. It provides maximum ground clearance and ensures that wheels always touch the ground while driving. Cutting brakes transmit power to other wheels when one wheel skids or gets stuck.

Benefit to society: ATVs are designed for off-road use; to handle a wider variety of terrain than most other vehicles. ATV can be employed as miniature tractor in cultivating fields and planting crops or a garden by attachments of a chisel plow or disc plow to the rear of the machine.

• The Objective: To develop high speed car constructed from composites of carbon fiber and similar ultra-lightweight materials.
• Highlights of the project: A Formula One car is a single-seat, open cockpit, open wheel racing car with substantial front and rear wings, and an engine positioned behind the driver based on the Fundamentals of Aerodynamics and Material Sciences.

Benefit to society: Motorsport cars like formula 1 have been a key driver of technological development in automotive sector. For instance when the pioneering female racer, Dorothy Levitt Dorothy used a mirror to see what was behind her, the idea of permanently affixing a mirror was adopted by the industry. Similarly, Fuel injection, All-wheel drive, Dual-clutch transmissions are examples of innovations that were adapted by industry and disseminated to the society.