Still don’t have anything for Valentine’s Day? We wholeheartedly suggest that you fire up that printer and get ready to fall in love with engineering all over again, because [JBV Creative] has designed a super-sweet piece of machinery that would turn the gears of anyone’s heart. He calls this the most overly-engineered candy dispenser ever, and we have to agree. It’s certainly one of the most beautiful we’ve ever seen.
There’s no electronics at all in this elegant design, just purely mechanical, hand-cranked fun. Turning the crank does two things at once — it moves a little access panel back and forth underneath the chute that governs the number of candies given, and at the same time, moves the conveyor belt along to deliver the goods to the receiving area.
This entire design is absolute genius, especially the decoupling mechanism that shuts off the flow of candy but allows the belt to keep moving. Be sure to watch the build video where [JBV Creative] effortlessly snap-fits the machine together without a single tool, and stay for the follow-up video where he discusses the engineering challenges and shows just how much work went into it.
Of course, there’s more than one way to overly-engineer a candy dispenser. Here’s one that finds the holy grail of peanut M&Ms — the ones that didn’t get a peanut.
Hmm. I wonder. Perhaps it might be possible to make a skittles mincer that can injection mould the resulting paste? Perhaps a grinder that can remove the shells separately and then coat the resulting moulded shape after it’s formed. Maybe warm the paste and then use compressed air to cool the end product? Hmm. Skittles turned into 3D printer filament?
A more over-engineered one? Like one that has a gumball race track and stands about 4 feet tall?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/FAST-TRACK-RACING-Interactive-Arcade-25-Cent-GUMBALL-MACHINE-Working-with-key-/264962707313
Anyone else notice the “Fuck in” and “Fuck YOU” prints in the background?
This reminded me of that Westinghouse video posted two weeks ago where the guy snaps together an IBM Proprinter in like three minutes. Couldn’t stop watching the assembly.
That was fun. I’d pay a little extra if i could buy things that you have to assemble like this. It’d make repairs much easier.
For anyone else interested, here’s the link: https://hackaday.com/2021/02/03/retrotechtacular-design-for-assembly-1980s-style/#more-458695
Flashbacks to when printers used more steel shafts and switches vs sensors. HP officejets are about the best I’ve been finding these days to salvage from and only come with two typically, an 8mm and a 6mm. All the other inkjets I’ve disassembled, Lexmark and Canon only use sheet metal ways.