Racked Utility Pole Puller

Overview

The customer is Northwestern Rural Electric Cooperative. They are requesting a redesign of their current racked utility pole puller as their current model isn’t as efficient as line crews need. Crews resort to using the pole crane to remove utility poles. Northwestern Rec needs a redesign that must be easier to use and more efficient than the current model being used to minimize setup and usage time. Will result in minimized costs to the customer in the form of less maintenance and possible replacement of expensive pole cranes.

Objectives

When meeting with the company initially, a demonstration of the pole puller model they were using at the time was done to get a better understanding of the issues. The largest issue with the current model observed was the overall time used to complete the removal process. The main parts causing this were the interruption variability, chain used in model, and stroke length of the current cylinder. The group approached the problem by acknowledging a larger stroke would be needed to remove the pole faster along with a method of gripping the pole better, but with no slippage or tangling like the chain often did. It was also recognized that keeping the overall design to as few components as possible would help with operation complexity and design cost for the company.

Approach

• Visited sponsor and observed current problems
• Researched other existing models
• Brainstormed new designs and approaches
• Combined the best of each of these designs into a final design
• Refined this design after more research
• Each person was assigned 1 piece to analyze with hand calculations and ANSYS simulations.
• Standardized/premade parts were selected and ordered
• Blueprints were made of subparts, subassemblies, and final assembly.
• Original part designs of the group members were machined and fabricated.
• Final design was assembled per print.

Outcomes

• The sponsor will save $635.98 as a result of this project
• The project reduced set up time by having the project nearly fully assembled rather than in individual pieces.
• The larger cylinder used in the new design allows for the pole to be removed with fewer cycles, allowing for the line crews to be much more efficient with their time than before. 
• The new design resulted in a safer approach than the previously used model as it is a more hands-off approach for line crews. Additionally, use of a sling instead of chain makes the assembly safer. This is due to the fact that if the sling breaks, the injury potential is a lot less than that of a chain.