Nondestructive Disassembly System for White Board Marker

Abstract

The rapidly growing concern about environmental and resource protection have stimulatedmany industrial sectors to solve the disposal problems of used products. The recovery processes canbe simply categorized into material recovery and product/component recovery. Material recoverymostly involves disassembly for separation and processing of materials of used products. Destructive methods such as dismantling, shredding, or chemical operations are normally used. Product recoveryincludes disassembly, cleaning, sorting, replacing or repairing bad components, reconditioning,testing, reassembling and inspecting. These recovered components/products can be reused inrepairing and re-manufacturing. That provides an opportunity in bringing the used products back to an “as new” condition. This paper utilizes the concept of non-destructive method of product recovery processes and develops an automatic disassembly system for white board marker pens. The experimental results show that the cycle time for the disassembly processes is about 3.8 second that is believed to be compatible to the desired feeding rate for manufacturing. In addition, the reused rate for the recovered components is close to 100% except the fiber-refill component.