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Our team successfully created a prototype of an automated cocktail shaker. It had both the back-and-forth motion as well as the slight angle change that bartenders make. Our final prototype even had a slight tip of the shaker due to the holder going over the edge of the linkage plate. Our team ran into a few issues with the wood wearing down and causing unwanted movement and alignment. We also had to make last-minute additions to prevent the linkage plate from uncoupling from the cam, which was caused by the weight shift of water within the shaker. Due to time constraints and a lack of materials, we were not able to connect our motors to a motor controller and adjust the speeds of the motors, instead, they were connected directly to batteries. This would we be a great project for another group to continue as there are many improvements and features that could be added.
Future Work
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There are a few extra improvements that would help make the actual motion path closer to the predicted path, and closer to the motion path a bartender makes. Adding a slot to the linkage plate that the shaker holder could fit into would help stabilize the movement of the shaker and keep it in a straight line. An Arduino or motor controller could be used to adjust the speed of the linkage and the speed of the cam to better time the two movements with each other, and it could make the entire motion faster than what our team was able to do. While the cam motor and linkage motor could be coupled in the future this may make it harder to have varying speeds, but is still an option for improvement. The main future work that could be made is scaling the entire mechanism to accommodate an actual cocktail shaker and , account for a greater shaker mass, and account for the chaotic nature of the contents within the shaker.