I - Introduction and Background

The purpose of this project was to investigate a problem/idea and implement a motorized mechanism to solve/facilitate it. The resulting working assembly would then ideally involve a closed kinematic chain with a sliding link on a rotating link. Group 5 decided to work on creating a crank slider mechanism to crush aluminum cans. The goal of the can crusher would be to be a functioning prototype that could crush cans in a safe manner and out-perform the efficiency an average person is capable of. The team sought to create a prototype that was full scale, cheap and easy to make, and could easily be modified to repurpose the crank slider. More details on the design process, kinematic analysis, manufacturing and assembly, mechatronics, and results/conclusions is shown in the following pages.