Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Jcati Carbon Fiber Recycler: Crusher System, Devin Riley

All Undergraduate Projects

With a substantial rise in Carbon Fiber use across all industries, the need for a way to recycle the waste has grown as well. A group of Mechanical Engineering Technology students at Central Washington University funded by the Joint Center for Aerospace Technology (JCATI) have created a machine to recycle waste wing trimmings from the Boeing company’s airplanes. This machine consists of 5 different sub-assemblies being the oven, crusher, gear train, conveyor, and shredder. The purpose of this project was to decrease the deflection in the crusher caused by bulging in the housing and movement of the bearings. To decrease …

Jcati Carbon Fiber Recycler: Oven Heating System, Kezyah Mantanona

All Undergraduate Projects

Central Washington University Mechanical Engineering Technology students are working with the Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation (JCATI) to create a device that recycles carbon fiber wing trimmings produced by the wing manufacturing process for the Boeing 777 airplanes. The solution to this problem was to utilize crushing, shredding, and pyrolysis to remove the resin from the composite material and provide carbon fiber that can be repurposed. This project focuses on both the Oven Enclosure which will house the Oven Heating System as well as the heating elements and control circuit that are responsible for allowing the material to reach …

Jcati Crusher Drive Train, Matthew Denchel

All Undergraduate Projects

This project is sponsored by JCATI (Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation) to research and manufacture a machine to recycle strips of carbon fiber from retired aircraft wings. The drive train powering the crushing wheels was not delivering enough power into the crushing wheels to completely delaminate the strips of carbon fiber. Another issue experienced was the spur gears transferring power between crushing shafts failed.

This issue was first approached by analyzing the gear reduction ratio powering the crushing wheels. Then the next analysis was performed to find the amount of torque required to delaminate the carbon fiber. The minimum …

Jcati Carbon Fiber Recycler: Oven Heating System, Sean Tomkins

All Undergraduate Projects

What happens to carbon fiber from airline wing tips when their service life ends, and they get replaced? Throwing them away would be wasteful, the Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation (JCATI) project can extract the carbon fiber from airline wing tips to be recycled. The JCATI project is a continuation from the work done by previous senior class engineering students and has a new set of issues to be addressed each year. This year there was a need for a new oven system for the JCATI carbon fiber recycler with this project’s focus being on designing the oven’s heating …

Jcati Carbon Fiber Shredder 2022, Parker Sudderth

All Undergraduate Projects

This project is a potential solution to keep the carbon fiber waste from airplane manufacturing to a minimum, sponsored by the Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation (JCATI). The design and assembly will be scalable for future industry application. The overall design of the whole carbon fiber recycler consists of a crusher, shredder, and oven. This report is on the caron fiber shredder module. The shredder is tasked with being able to shred the delaminated carbon fiber scrap that directly comes from the crusher. The operation must produce shreds in the proper size to be gathered and delivered to the …

Jcati - Drive System, Tim Boswell

All Undergraduate Projects

Each year, Mechanical Engineering Technology students receive a grant from The Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation (JCATI) to engineer a device that is capable of breaking down carbon fiber trimmings for recycling. The students who received the grant this year have redesigned portions of the existing system in an attempt to solve issues that have kept the system from working properly in the past. Though much collaboration between group members has been needed, each member has been responsible for their own portion of the project. The purpose of this portion of the project has been to address binding and …

Jcati Base Plate, Jacob Atamian

All Undergraduate Projects

Students of the Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) program at Central Washington University have contributed to an ongoing Carbon Fiber Recycler project funded by the Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation (JCATI). The goal of this project was to modify the existing recycling system to produce a higher success rate of recycled carbon composite material. This report focuses on increasing the rigidity of the crushing gears so that the deflection occurring among the components during operation was below 0.005 inches to ensure proper operating conditions. The operating speed of the crushing gears was 2.5 rpm with a crushing load of 10,500 …

Jcati Pyrolysis System, Jack Dutton

All Undergraduate Projects

The Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation (JCATI) project is designed to recycle carbon fiber pieces for use in manufacturing. Part of the system requires the removal of resin from the carbon fibers to facilitate the recycling of carbon fiber. To accomplish this task the pyrolysis process is implemented using a commercial grade oven with a conveyor system. Argon gas is injected into the shroud and over the oven to purge the interior of oxygen. The conveyor system enables this to be a batch process. A ramp is used to allow simple addition of material to the conveyor system and …

Carbon Fiber Recycler : Fiber Reclaimer, Alexander Edwards

All Undergraduate Projects

Boeing uses composite components for the 777x aircraft. The production of composite parts results in flashing (excess material) that must be trimmed and "thrown away" as scrap. Boeing is investigating means of recycling these scraps. The method proposed for this project is to delaminate and shred the composite material. The delamination process uses a ram to press two claw shaped devices together that bends and deforms the material in opposite directions. The chipper process uses counter rotating saw blades spaced 1/8” apart to produce small shredded material. This shredding material is pyrolyzed (heated) to decay the resin leaving the carbon …

Repurposing Carbon Fiber Composite Through Mechanical Means, Jason Morrow

All Undergraduate Projects

Composite waste from the 777 aircraft is a growing concern for Boeing and amounts to an excess of 600,000 pounds of highly valuable carbon fiber being thrown away. Reclaiming this material has been a long sought-after goal of Boeings as the current solution is ever expanding landfills. The two current methods of recycling composite waste are chemically and mechanically processing. The focus of this paper will be demonstrating the feasibility of mechanically processing composite waste to increase storage efficiency before chemically treating to reclaim the actual carbon fibers. This paper provides a two-stage solution for the recycling question. The first …