Does your dog eat too fast? [Thurber] does, and he even chokes occasionally while snarfing down the kibble — naturally this worried his owners, so [Jason] stepped up to the challenge to slow him down. Introducing the Thurber Feeder 5000.

[Jason] is a seasoned maker, and has built a few CNC machines in his day — he’s even automated an Etch a Sketch with stepper motors. Making the Thurber Feeder 5000 was a piece of cake. He designed the entire thing in 3D CAD and then used his home-made CNC machine to cut out all the parts, 3D printing a few of the more complex mounting brackets.

It’s a fairly simple device consisting of a food hopper (seal-able to keep Thurber away), a stepper motor and an auger bit borrowed from a chocolate fondue fountain. The stepper goes through a 6:1 belt pulley ratio which gives it a whopping 200 oz-in of torque to push those kibbles and bits through the feeding pipe. The speed is adjustable by programming the Parallax Propeller, so once they found an acceptable eating speed [Jason] set it as default. A single button turns it on, and while the machine is running it lights up — turning off when little [Thurber] is done.

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