Design and fabricate a mini bending testing machine

Abstract

Manufacturing engineering knowledge is very important to carry out this project to ensure that the student understand what they are needed to do. This project is about designing and fabricating a mini testing bending machine that can be used by university students to conduct bending test. This project involved a process of designing bending testing machine with a consideration of a few factors that is the size, cost and portability. To ensure that the design is not the same as the design on the market, studies have been conducted to examine and to compare the design that is already in the market. To fabricate this design, there are using a few machining process such as cutting, milling and welding. After the design is fabricated to real product, testing process is conducted to determine the capability and the reliability of the machine. Capability and reliability is important factor so that this machine can be used to conduct bending test otherwise this machine is useless. This machine is capable to conduct experiment for 3 point bending test only and the length of specimen is between 50 mm to 150 mm. Using finite element analysis this machine can withstand load up to 1000 N and this load is below the yield strength of the material but from experiment conducted this machine can support only 200 N because of the load platform to small and it is not stable if more load is added. From experiment result, using aluminum as specimen the result is slightly difference from universal testing machine but for mild steel as specimen there are much differ from universal testing machine so using aluminum is reliable than mild steel.