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Mechanical Technology — November 2015
⎪
Innovative engineering
⎪
T
he 2015 PneuDrive challenge
was to design a game changer
for the food and beverage indus-
try. This year’s competitors had
the opportunity to step across the ‘bridge’
between academic theory and business
reality. The winners of the competition
receive a ten-day all expenses paid trip
to Europe where they will have an op-
portunity to present their designs to the
head offices of the sponsor companies –
another invaluable learning opportunity
for young engineers. SEW-Eurodrive and
SMC Pneumatics also offer equipment
to competing universities to ensure that
future students are afforded the opportu-
nity to experiment with the latest in drive
engineering and pneumatic technology.
The judging panel, consisting of
industry and product experts, worked
through the entries during a two-day
judging process at the SEW-Eurodrive
offices in Johannesburg. The top three
teams for the 2015 competition were
announced on Friday 6 November
2015: Stellenbosch University for its
BottleBot; WITS for the Potato Game
Changer; and WITS’ second entry for an
Stellenbosch wins PneuDrive Challenge 2015
The PneuDrive Challenge judging panel consisted of a range of industry experts, from left to right: John
Menasce, Hatch Consulting Engineering and Project Implementation; Brian Abbott, product manager SMC
Pneumatics South Africa; Johan van Graan, trainer at SEW-Eurodrive; Riaan van Eck, training manager
at SMC Pneumatics South Africa; Mark Gordon, ESKOM; Eugene Tondolo, South African Fluid Power
Association; Conrad Pilger, GM sales & engineering, SEW-Eurodrive; Tobias Nittel, food and beverage con-
veying expert, SEW-Eurodrive, Germany; and Greg Perry, GM operations, SEW-Eurodrive South Africa.
The PneuDrive Challenge, a mechatronics design competition for engineering
students throughout South Africa, has come to a close for 2015, with
Stellenbosch once again walking away with top honours.
Autonomous Warehouse Floor Cleaner,
which also received the Innovation prize.
Stellenbosch’s BottleBot takes
first place
The Mechabrewers team from Stel-
lenbosch University visited local micro
beer brewery, Stellenbrau, and analysed
a specific problem – the need for an
efficient, inexpensive and automated
application for transporting empty beer
bottles to the capping machine.
Micro-breweries do not always have
the capital to invest in expensive equip-
ment. Thus they often rely on rudimen-
tary means of solving problems, such
as transporting bottles in a factory.
Stellenbrau relies on manual labour for
most of its operations.
The Stellenbosch team – consist-
ing of Reghardt Pretorius, Johannes
Leuvennink, Madeli du Toit, Josua Blom
and Jean Swart, under the guidance
of lecturer, Cobus Muller – proposed a
solution to improve and add value to the
company by allowing better utilisation of
labour, and improvements in time and
efficiency. Called BottleBot, the solution
by automates the transportation of empty
beer bottles to the capping machine.
BottleBot has a low energy consump-
tion (24.474 kWh per year) and has been
designed to be controlled by a smart
phone or tablet device. The BottleBot can
increase efficiency and accuracy through
complete automation and elimination of
human error and contamination. One
cycle consists of picking up 12 bottles
on one side of the production line and
placing them onto the capping machine
on the opposite side. The duration of
each cycle can be as low as 8.0 sec.
The BottleBot’s retail price will be sig-
nificantly lower than the price of similar
products available on the market and the
capital expense can be recouped within
two-and-a-half years.
WITS University’s Potato Game
Changer
This team had a technical entry of a high
standard that addresses the problem of
transforming waste into useable energy
in a potato chip factory.
Potato chip factories produce signifi-
cant quantities of starch-laden wastewa-
ter and solid vegetable wastes such as
potato peels. The starch wastewater