Lucky Charms Marbit SeparationCritical Design Review

May 16, 2003

Gregory Dickman

Roy Mitchell

Karen Palumbo

George Simmonds

Scott Walker

Andy Wang

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 2

Agenda

• Background• Objective• Intricacies and Constraints• Deliverables• Concept Development• Preliminary Testing• Concept Selection• Fabrication• Final Testing• Proposed Design

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 3

Background

• Lucky Charms Cereal Consists of 2 main components, Marbits and Base Cereal.

• Currently General Mills employs an offline check to ensure the marbit percentage per box.

• The process is performed by separating marbits by hand.

• The marbits are discarded after this process, and the base cereal is utilized for further testing.

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 4

Objective

• General Mills requested that we develop a device, method and procedure to replace the current separation method.

• The process must…– Be statistically repeatable– Be Accurate within 1% of the current method– Be robust and straightforward– Be completed in 5 minutes or less by 1 lab technician– End with sample of base cereal that can be crushed and

used for further testing

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 5

Intricacies and Constraints

• Marbits and base cereal are approximately the same size, weight and density.

• Special promotional marbits are often added to the cereal.

• A budget of $1500 was allotted to the group for research, testing and prototype.

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 6

Concept Development

• A series of concepts ideas were developed, a few were chosen for further analysis.

Concept Development

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 7

Preliminary Testing

• Tests were performed in the chemistry lab.

• Simple prototypes were assembled in order to assess the feasibility of ideas.

• Ideas were analyzed and synthesized to find optimal design.

• Two most feasible designs were chosen to be fabricated as prototypes.

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 8

Concept Selection

Heat Tray design Pin Press design

Common components were utilized to enable both designs to be fabricated under the allotted budget.

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 9

Fabrication

100% Team Fabricated (Except Heating Element)

Similar Designs

Identical Sub-Frames

Modifications Made to Press Plates

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 10

Pin Press Testing

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 11

Heat Tray Testing

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 12

Heat Tray Testing (Destruction)

198 g separated by hand198 g separated with heat tray prototype

Base cereal was tested for Vitamin C and Moisture

Hypothesis tests were conducted and showed no

significant difference

5 boxes of cereal tested

Base cereal was tested for Vitamin C and Moisture

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 13

Heat Tray Testing (Temperature)

• Various studies performed to determine optimal temperature of hot plate and pressure time.

• Plate surface varies within +/- 10 degrees Celsius due to crude dial and nature of heating element.

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 14

Heat Tray Testing (Repeatability)

• A gage study was performed to determine differences between operators, within operators and between batches.

• Difficulties resulted due to the non-uniform distribution and randomness of the hot plate.

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 15

Heat Tray Testing (Time)

• Based on time study analysis, it is estimated that separation would take 6.54 min with a hot plate of the same effectiveness.

• Based on 100% accuracy (error times included in study)

• With incorporation of a higher caliber hot plate, it estimated error rates can be reduced by approximately 50% yielding a total process time of 4.80 minutes.

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 16

Proposed Design

• Based on a 12 by 24 inch proportional controlled hot plate

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 17

Budget

Part Description Supplier Part Number Qty Price SubtotalHeat Element Aluminum Hot Plate McMaster- Carr 3271K14 1 $216.11 $216.11Springs Precision Compression Springs McMaster- Carr 94340K142 1 $9.40 $9.40Plate Insert Perforated Sheet McMaster- Carr 9232T181 1 $36.36 $36.36Bearings Linear Ball Bearing McMaster- Carr 6483K13 8 $25.26 $202.08Shafts Precision Ground Shafts Metal Supermarkets n/a 1 $28.62 $28.62Base and Top Aluminum Plate (12"x12") Metal Supermarkets n/a 3 $95.00 $285.00Tray Aluminum Plate (8"x8") Metal Supermarkets n/a 1 $21.00 $21.00Foam Foam McMaster-Carr 8882K1 1 $1.70 $1.70Pins Spring Pins Donated n/a 900 $0.00 $0.00Assembly Misc Nuts and Bolts (estimate) Shop / Local Retailer n/a 1 $25.00 $25.00

TOTAL $825.27

Budget (Heat Tray and Pin Press Design Prototypes)

Part Description Supplier Part Number Qty Price SubtotalHeat Element Aluminum Hot Plate Wenesco HP 1224 D 1 $1,450.00 $1,450.00Bearings Linear Ball Bearing McMaster- Carr 6483K16 4 $53.30 $213.20Shafts Precision Ground Shafts Metal Supermarkets 60345K45 1 $145.54 $145.54Raw Material Aluminum Plate MSC 2255800 1 $224.84 $224.84Raw Material Aluminum Plate MSC 9425455 1 $17.52 $17.52Foam Foam McMaster-Carr 8882K1 2 $1.70 $3.40Assembly Misc Nuts and Bolts (estimate) Shop / Local Retailer n/a 1 $10.00 $10.00

TOTAL $2,064.50

Estimated Budget for Proposed Full Scale Model

© 2002 Lucky Charms Senior Design Team 18

Questions