In historical times, before the pandemic, most people had to commute to work in the mornings, and breakfast often ended up being a bit rushed. [Elite Worm] is very serious about getting his breakfast mix exactly right, and o shave a bit of time off the prep, he built a 3D printed automatic ingredient dispenser for his breakfast bowl.
[Elite Worm] breakfast consists of four ingredients, that have either a powder or granular consistency. They are held in 3D printed hoppers, with a screw top for refilling and a servo-operated door with a funnel at the bottom. The hoppers need to be shaken to properly dispense the ingredients, so all four are mounted on a bracket that can slide up and down on linear bearings. The shaking is done by a brushed DC motor with a slider-crank mechanism, which moves bracket and hoppers up and down very vigorously. [Elite Worm] notes that the shaking is probably a bit too violent and can make the entire table shake if it isn’t sturdy enough, and reducing the motor RPM might be a good idea. Below the hopper system sits a movable weighing station with a load cell, a custom ATmega328P based control board and a Nextion touch screen display, which allows for various ingredient combinations to be saved. The load cell is used to keep track of the ingredient quantities by weight, as they are dispensed one at a time.
We really like the ingenuity of the build, but personally, we would have swapped out the hopper for something that’s moulded, since all the crevices in 3D printed parts is a perfect place for bacteria to grow and can be tricky to clean properly
If you’re more a cereal person, we’ve got a hack for that, and how would like your robotically prepared egg?
This is cool. Maybe vibrations could be reduced simply by making it heavier. I assume that those legs are hollow.
it’s some kind of a dog or cat feeder but for humans :) also i’m wondering about the aftertaste of the pla
This is cool. The kind of project I’m glad someone else did. Shall stick with lobbing the nuts, seeds and powder into a large pot (big enough for 2 weeks) and shaking. Then, when I want a low carb shake (dodging diabetes rather than building up), a scoop comes in handy.
More kitchen gadgets would be more good. If someone sold this – then I’d be tempted. The insane breakfast machine would be a great addition to the morning.
Don’t forget to glue a bottle opener on the side to escape the trap of having a kitchen appliance that does only one thing cluttering up the place.
I think you could just pwm the brushed motor, then you could tune it to the minimum shake necessary for each ingredient. Great project,
I snorted pretty good when i saw the thing actually shake, man he wasn’t kidding with the title!
I suspect the large motion/low frequency isn’t actually necessary. I bet a similar effect could be achieved by putting a vibration motor on each canister. If you mount each with a large soft rubber o-ring, it would vibrate without shaking everything.
Pretty neat though. Makes me wonder how useful this might be for common ingredients like flour/salt/sugar.
The beeping will drive u or wife creazy after 1week.
Challange: how to make it small as possible
I would go with spiral in pipe delivery and time based, should be 10% good, with only 10% of current size