Cake Decorating Robot

Description

It's someone's birthday, which means making a cake, preferably with some kind of design drawn onto it with icing. But drawing accurate and to-scale shapes in icing is very difficult. You can't erase any mistakes, which can make for a very poorly made design. So what is the solution? Well just like with cutting plywood, a CNC machine makes everything more accurate. This project demonstrates how to create a CNC machine that can extrude icing to draw shapes onto a cake with ease.

Files

photon_breakout.brd

brd - 46.38 kB - 09/21/2018 at 18:09

Download

Components

1 × DIY Universal CNC Machine The base machine at https://www.hackster.io/products/buy/34900?s=BAhJIhcxMDY0ODUsQmFzZUFydGljbGUGOgZFRg%3D%3D%0A

1 × NEMA 17 Stepper Motor

1 × DRV8825 Evaluation, Demonstration Kits, Boards and Modules / Evaluation Kits, Boards and Modules

1 × Custom Photon Stepper Driver Board

1 × DFRobot Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1703.html

Build Instructions

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1

Demonstration Video
2

The Base CNC Machine

On August 14, 2018 I published a project the featured a DIY Universal CNC machine. Its tools could be interchanged easily. Building the machine is quite complex, so see this project for further instructions.
3

Improving the Machine

My initial project did have some flaws, however, as brought to my attention in the comments section of it. For one, the X axis belt had uneven tension. This could cause the movements to not be as precise. The X axis carriage also didn't fit onto the rail tightly enough, causing the entire assembly to tip over and grind against the rail. To fix this I completely redesigned the X axis carriage block by moving where the timing belt fits in and moving the V slot wheels to better locations, as well as adding another wheel to the back to prevent tilting.