Electromechanical Design:
Auto Vender

Auto Vender is a vending machine with 2.5 degrees of freedom. The capstone project for ME 360, Electormechanical design, design and execution were completed over a 4 week period

Planning

As a team, tasks were split and pointed based on importance and a rough bill of materials was created to avoid last minute purchases

The original gantry design was built with a horizontal beam traversing up and down.

This later evolved into a vertical beam traversing side to side to reduce weight of the vertical component.

CAD

Collaborating in Onshape, the team created a comprehensive 3D model of our design speeding up each design iteration and tweak.

The Details:

  • Entire assembly contains over 100 individual parts

  • 70 of the parts custom designed by team

  • 28 uniquely designed parts

Iterations

The original x-gantry slider had larger bearings but only on 1 side.

The final version utilized 4 bearings to avoid binding

Tolerancing for the belt interface was absolutely critical

Assembly

All hands on deck!

Mounting the Arduino proved to be a small oversight but was quickly fixed with the 3d printer and a Dremel.

Presentation

The end product successfully vends for all 2 character locations with locations that have already been accessed returning an error message

Sans-cover, the tiered buttresses and labels are a subtle nod to art deco