October 12, 2023

This week included some further project development, specially on the design as well as some research for parts and their functionality. After some consideration, the cocktail mixer design and structure was changed as it can be seen in the PROTOTYPE 2 (Figure 3). 

The main difference in this new design is that the glass will not be moving because the mobile cart will only increase the time to prepare the drink and the risk of spillage. Keeping in mind that the objective of this machine is to prepare cocktails automatically, it was decided that the most efficient way to do it is by placing a glass manually in the cabin and selecting the cocktail from the menu on a touch screen. The glass will be filled by hoses on the top of the structure.  

Figure 3. PROTOTYPE 2: Fixed glass and touch screen.

One of the main problems that we managed to solve this week was to determine the type of pumps to be used, and considering our design, the best ones will be peristaltic pumps. Peristaltic pumps are a type of positive displacement pump that use the biological principle of peristalsis as a basis for their design. Inside the pump, rollers compress the tube, creating a vacuum which draws fluid through the tube.  Since the only component that will be in contact with the fluid is the tube, the risk of the pump contaminating the fluid is eliminated (Watson Marlow Limited, 2023).