SPENT FUEL ROD PROCESSING (WIRE REMOVAL)

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Working with the Idaho National Laboratory to make processing spent fuel rods, particularly wire removal, a less labor intensive end less time consuming process.                                                                                                                                                                                            

Pacman proof of concept design.  This shearing device cuts the              spacer wire into 6" pieces, thus eliminating the wire chopper                  that is currently being used by the INL.		Team Shear Performance has been involved with all stages of the design process, from the drawing board to manufacturing in the U of I machine shop.
The shears in the Pacman design must line up perfectly in order     for the device to work. For highest precision, datums were     carefully chosen on all parts.		An engineer should be conscious of manufacturability in all parts. In manufacturing these parts ourselves (and with the help of our mentor, Phil), we learned some manufacturing tricks. Above is a tooling plate that was used to set up about half of our parts. In manufacturing the shears, it cut manufacturing time in half. see lessons learned for more manufacturing tricks/lessons.