Design of an Automated Plank Sorter

Loh, Joe Yang (2022) Design of an Automated Plank Sorter. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

Malaysia Plank Industry losing competition advantage in the global and facing production issues due to high cost produced plank. One of the main reasons behind it is the low productivity and high labour cost spent in the plank sorting process.The implemented plank sorting method is still following the traditional method which is sorting the plank manually hence a large number of labours are required. However the efficiency of this method is much lower as compared to the plank industry that acquired automated solutions. Thus improvements are required to change the current situation. As evidence, this project is one of the products that collaborate with Malaysia Timber Council(MTC) which aims to design an automated plank sorting system. As the name implies, an automated plank sorting system was expected to replace all the traditional plank sorting processes which include grading, sorting and storing. Other than that, another highlight of the proposed system is to give ease for forklift during plank extraction. The core of this project can be separated into two parts which are the mechanical parts and software parts. The 3D modeling of the proposed system was completed by using Solidwork while the logic flow of the system was programmed by using ladder logic. As a result, the proposed system managed to improve on the sorting rate and cut down the number of labor force. Hence it can be concluded easily that the proposed system has higher efficiency and productivity as compared to existing systems.