Nestor is a senior mechanical engineering student graduating in May 2018 with a track in dynamic systems. His academic interest are robotics and automation and his extracurricular interest is martial arts. After graduation Nestor will seek an job in the automation industry and years later he’ll seek his master degree.
Chris is a senior mechanical engineering student graduating in May 2018. Some of his academic interests include material science and 3D printing. His other interests include playing soccer and producing music. Post-graduation, Chris will seek employment in the construction industry.
Alex is a senior mechanical engineering student graduating in May 2018. His academic interests include thermal fluids and material science. Outside of his school interests, he enjoys traveling and playing music. After graduating Alex will seek employment in engineering sales.
Donald is a mechanical engineering senior graduating in 2018 with a track in thermal fluids. Donald is easily noticed at events in Tallahasse because he is the guy on slilts fire spinning and juggling. After graduating he will seek a career in the thermal fluids field.
Ryan is a senior mechanical engineering student graduating in spring 2018 with a materials track. Outside of school his interests include tennis and learning new things. After graduating Ryan intends on finding employment at a machine shop.
Tree harvesting practices create great risk for human injury and damage to surroundings. For example, many trees have fallen on cables, nearby houses, and people. In addition, harvesting trees is expensive to the average consumer due to these dangers that arise. Our team is engineering a machine that can climb, de-limb, and section a tree. A worker controls this machine, at a safe distance, to avoid falling limbs. The machine’s name, The Bear, comes from the way it climbs a tree like a bear. Hydraulics power The Bear, which consists of two clamps to grip the tree trunk. The top clamp acts as the bear’s arms and the bottom clamp acts as the bear legs. The Bear climbs up the tree, using these two clamps. The top clamp has a de-limbing blade to remove limbs as the device climbs. Once The Bear nears the top of the tree, it will begin to section the tree from the top as it climbs down.
Today there are many problems that arise due to the dangers of tree harvesting.
Our team was tasked to develop a device that can climb, delimb, and section a tree. Climbing and delimbing will be done using hydraulics. Sectioning the tree has been decided by the sponsor to be a stretched goal of this project.
The hydaulic system has been setup so that it will be able to cycle up (climb) once.
The upper clamp has been 3D printed to provide a visual representation of how the clamp will work when it is attached to a tree.
Our team is currently in the design phase. The hydraulic fluid must be controlled by using a microcontroller that controls the flow into each of the cylinders. Once analysis and testing is done on the design, it will be presented to the sponsor. Further updates will be provided as progress has been made.
Improvement in the design for the future would require building the full sized clamps and the body of the ROV so that the ROV will be able to attach to the tree, climb, and de-limb it.
