Experimental Analysis of Geneva Mechanism for Bottle Washing

This study evaluates the performance of Geneva Mechanism as applied to bottle washing in a typical Beverage or Brewery Industry. A test rig was designed, fabricated and employed for the performance evaluation. The rig operates on the intermittent rotary motion from a four slot external Geneva Mechanism and requires manual loading and unloading of bottles. The bottles are loaded on subsequent indexing part of the rotating table and are washed one after another. Experiments were carried out on the rig by varying speeds and monitoring the cycle time, washing time and indexing time. The speed ranged from 6rpm to 20rpm. The cycle time obtained for selected speeds was between 10.639 seconds and 38.060 seconds, the washing time was between 2.434 seconds and 7.844 seconds and the indexing time was between 0.078 seconds and 1.772 seconds. The maximum pin-slot contact force for selected speeds was between 16N and 29N. The graphs plotted for time taken and number of bottles washed at selected speeds were all linear functions while the graphs plotted by varying other parameters such as speed, maximum pin-slot contact force, cycle time, washing time and indexing were represented by third order polynomial functions of differing coefficients and constants. The times taken to wash eight bottles for all the speeds were 28.922, 35.914, 49.62, 78.414 and 105.372 seconds. The analysis of the results collected from the experimentation gave washing efficiency for the system in the range of 81.57% and 96.89% with the highest value obtained at 19rpm. This work presents a practical application of Geneva mechanism for worktable indexing and bottle washing. Keywords: Geneva Mechanism, Cycle Time, Bottle Washing, Productivity, Indexing Time, Speed, Rotating Table