Thor's final project! 56k pwnage

Hey guys, I just thought I would show you all what I've been up to these past few weeks. My Intro to Mechanical Engineering class has a final project of building a robot. The design parameters were basically that it had to do something interesting for 30-60 seconds for less than $30 besides the few things we got from them. I had thought of doing a oil changer, shoe cleaner, scale model of a drag track with racing cars, and other random things, but I decided on a drink machine.

The first stage of the machine is the straw dispenser. It basically spins a super underpowered motor attached to a notched wheel until the straw goes over a hole and falls into the cup.

The second stage is the ice dispensing part. There is a proportioning wheel attached to a motor inside an old cookie tin. The cookie tin has a hole in the bottom on one side with a chute to the cup and a hole in the top on the other side with a cylinder to act as an ice hopper. As the motor spins the proportioning wheel ice goes out the hole in the bottom and into the hole in the top simultaneously. A microswitch mounted on the lid tells motor when to stop.

Last stage is the liquid dispensing part. Its basically a beer bong with a valve in the line. The valve is attached to a gear motor there are two microswitches glued to the gear motor, one to tell it to stop when its fully opened and one to tell it to stop when its fully closed.

Its all programmed in a modified version of basic using a deal called a STAMP board. Its kinda hard to eplain, but its basically the programmable "ECU" of the robot. As you can see in the pictures there is a red LED, three green LED's, and a start switch. The red LED flashes and waits for the start switch to be closed. After the process starts one green LED will light up for each stage. Here is some pics:

After first trip to Menards and Ax Man. (Ax Man is a cool ass surplus store, its got some of the most random shit in the world)
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/6739/1000859wv3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Here she is all finished up... for the most part anyway. I am going to clean up the wiring and other shit like that, but its pretty much done.
http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/80/1000871nz3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Heres the wiring side... yikes. Four sensors, two monodirectional motors, one bidirectional motor, and four LED's.
http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/9185/1000872pm4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

The other side.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/426/1000873lt5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

The valve/motor assembly. I'm kinda proud of this guy here. :)
http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/9752/1000874wi5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

So what do you guys think? I'll have a video up when I get it completely done.

Looks great. Just needs some cleaning up (wiring and whatnot) and then a video. Does it all work properly? Looks great though!

Thanks! Yeah, I just got done cleaning up the wiring. Both of the bread boards are kinda hopeless, but I got the other ones all cleaned up. I will post more pics with the vid later tonight.

Well, I took a few minutes and made a short movie about it. Check it out y'all!

Thor's Robot (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg945WAOn00)

Woot woot bitches!

Looks pretty sweet man. It actually worked pretty good. I actually just got finished with my intro to engineering class. We had to make a boat... kinda gay

dude thats pretty cool. Big ups to thor06

man badass




first

DUDE!!!! SWEET!!!!!!!!!!!! You should make a plexi housing for the whole thing, make plexi glass housing for the drink, ice and straw thingy. But its SUPER SWEET. Make me one. :p

Talk you mute bastard!





A real man would have been all up in that video making a fool of himself. Much like I do. lol





:icon16:

Lol, oh Brian:loser:.......sweet project thor.

I was finally able to watch the video here at work. That was wickedly cool. Couple questions...

Does the thing know when the cup is full via sensor, or does it just pour for x seconds? Or x liters?

Is the computer actually running the thing? I didn't see if it was still hooked up when running. You say it's a programmable chip, but is it a standalone unit? When not attached, does it run on it's own?

Looks like Thor needs to learn how to weld.

I'm actually impressed with this. I always wanted to make stuff like this, but went to the wrong school. Obviously focused on the computer side.