Cake Plotter Machine

 

We decided to build a Cake Ploter Machine, tuned with our peruvian gastronomic boom.

We discussed about the mechanism, and we decided about the COREXY mechanism. Corexy mechanism is fast, simple and flexible, i. We found very usefull information in this site.

 

As that site mentions, some features of using CORExy mechanism are:

 

• Allowing rapid accelerations due to stationary (not moving) characteristic of the motors. Paralel kinematics allow that.

• CoreXY can be implemented with only three structural plates, all of which can nest during fabrication.

 

This machine will have an external extruder.

We added a z axis to allow the extruder move without printing.

 

Team work and distribution

 

I participate in the activities in group, Juan for the task Juan Carlos and me. We choose to design parts of the extruder and contribution some ideas for the structure design of the machine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The design of the extrusion not work perfect, because the chocolate need more force for push it down, the first idea was made a container of the the chocolate but latter the

 

The extruder first version

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A the early stage of the assignment we tried an extruder generated by 3D printer. It was made based on a previous documentation at instructables.com- We even got into the moment we tried many materials and connecting stepper motors managing with Arduino.

Because of the friction it didn't work.

 

The extruder final version

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mechanical design

 

The machine that we built decorates cakes with a radio of 35 cm. The group decided to make a Core XY design with an external extruder. The decorative "ink" is transmited through a tube that is hold with a special structure.

 

• For more information about Core XY configuration look his link: Core YX.
• We also added a Z axis in case the height of the cake varies.
• To build the machine, we decided to use 3mm MDF and laser cut for two main reasons:
  • The cost of materials decrease significantly when compare to thicker objects.
  • The laser cut is faster than the milling machine, so any change in the design can be rapidly update.
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Machine design