DESIGN AND MANUFACTURING OF WHEEL BALANCING MACHINE

Abstract

Many methods have been employed in past to overcome the issue if an unbalance in wheels which include Merrill balance method which used light for balancing purposes, while the wheel remains mounted on the vehicle. Other methods include the free rotation of the wheel, if the same point comes to bottom repeatedly then that implies the presence of extra mass at that point. Presently, a dedicated wheel balancing machine is used for this purpose which serves to balance the wheel both statically and dynamically. It comprises of a set of sensors, mounted on two different planes, and interfaced together, which detect the imbalance after rotating the wheel for a certain period of time at a constant RPM. After the processing of the results from these sensors, a final result in the form of mass to be added and position of the mass is given to the user. As limited information was available online regarding the manufacturing of this machine, we had to buy a used machine and perform revere engineering on it. The major challenges were faced in interfacing the two piezo sensors and optical encoder together. As in Pakistan, these types of machinery are imported from the foreign countries including China and Europe which costs more than 1 lac, there is a need of local manufacturing and repairing services of the wheel balancing machine which will cause a major drop in its price. The machine also needs to meet the standards of quality and accuracy to compete in the market. In light of the above-mentioned reasons, his project aims to design and assemble a locally manufactured, highly accurate and cost-effective wheel balancing machine. Key Words: Static, Dynamic, piezo sensor, optical encoder, constant r.p.m, imbalance.