Systematic design of carton separating machine

Corrugated cardboards (carton boards) are used for making containers to protect goods. Containers are made by cutting and folding a flat sheet of corrugated cardboard to obtain a desired pattern for one-piece package with fold-down corner. Undesired portions of the flat sheet cardboard are separated from the desired one-piece pattern. This may be called as ?the separation of the undesired pattern?. All of the steps are carried out using mass productions machines except ?the separation of the undesired pattern? that is usually the last production step before shipping the patterns to customers. The last step is usually performed manually using an employee who uses tools such as pneumatic saw or an adze to separate the unwanted portion form the desired one-piece pattern. This manual process slows down the production and creates damages on the edges of the cardboard such as buckling of flute structures, tears, and etc. This thesis aims to design an automated machine for ?the separation of the undesired pattern?. It uses systematic machine design methodology, which consists of conceptual design, embodiment design, and detail design stages. It also provides the steps of each phase including the results obtained.