The necessity for constant cookies
Baking, not like most different types of cooking, depends on exact portions, temperatures, and timings with the intention to get the right end result. And though cookies as a baked good are slightly extra forgiving, it’s nonetheless essential that every dough spherical is identical measurement and form going onto the baking tray. Fed up with having to tediously scoop out dough and deposit it in neat rows and columns, Chuck from the YouTube channel Startup Chuck determined to construct his personal gadget that would get a constant end result each time.
A failed experiment
Round ten years in the past Chuck constructed a considerably related prototype out of a glass cylinder, piston, and versatile plastic tubing. As the speculation went, pumping pressurized air into the underside chamber would push the piston upwards and transfer the dough by means of the tubing earlier than it might lastly be deposited out the opposite finish. Nonetheless, the dense nature of cookie dough induced an excessive amount of stress to construct and ultimately shattered the cylinder and Chuck’s hopes of constructing his dough-slinging system.
Designing the brand new dispenser
This time round, Chuck took inspiration from caulking weapons and married the idea of a mechanically-advantaged piston shifting towards a store-bought sausage casing of cookie dough. This fashion, reloading the chamber is so simple as putting in a brand new tube and watching because it will get progressively squeezed out the nozzle. The opposite enchancment to the design is a chopper on the finish of the nozzle, which is supposed to rapidly and cleanly slice portioned quantities robotically.
Electronics and pneumatics
Shifting the plunger in a linear method was completed by combining a NEMA23 stepper motor with a stepper driver and an Arduino microcontroller. At first, the velocity and distances have been fine-tuned with a pair of pushbuttons for shifting the piston out and in, however this was ultimately transitioned to fixed values. To slice the tube of dough on the actual proper second, a distance sensor was positioned to the aspect of the nozzle. When it begins studying a a lot smaller worth, it lets the microcontroller know the dough is on the right measurement. Performing the reducing motion is a dual-valve pneumatic piston, which slides both route relying on the aspect being opened by the Arduino board.
Time to bake
After some tinkering and tuning of the velocity values, dough disc peak, and nozzle measurement, Chuck examined his new gadget by putting down a row of cookie dough slugs onto a cookie sheet. Each bit measured in at round 17 grams in weight and was roughly seven centimeters huge as soon as baked- making this a profitable prototype. In a future follow-up video, Chuck plans on constructing a totally automated cookie merchandising machine that may dispense, bake, and ship a number of cookies without delay. For now, you’ll be able to watch his video on this cookie dough dispenser right here on YouTube.
