Return-roll stacker

DBT America a Bucyrus Company is headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA and is a "one-stop-shop" for the mining industry. The current facility and equipment are outdated and not ergonomically sound for their employees or production. Current operations in the facility require a great deal of manual lifting and stacking creating unnecessary strain. As of yet there have been no major accidents or injuries reported, however minor cases of tennis elbow and other related rotational and lifting injuries have been noted. DBT Hillsville is requesting an update to their production lines in order to prevent serious injury in the future, remove bottlenecks and increase production. Specifically for this project team, the company requested two solution options for the automation of their return-roll stacking process. This design solution needed to be able to fit into the current facility layout as well as the projected new layout to be implemented in the near future. DBT requested one alternative that would be inexpensive and may still require some manual operation, as well as a second alternative for a fully automated system. In essence these alternatives represent a basic design and a "bells and whistles" design. These designs would be required to take various sizes of return rolls off a conveyor system and automatically stack them in racks.