The De-Cruster

Team Members: Nishant Jayant, Riley Noble, Mike Orr

Project Description

Our goal was to design and create a robotic mechanism which would complete and everyday kitchen chore.  We took the need of picky children wanting crust-less bread as inspiration for the De-Cruster.  The initial design conceptualization centered around the user placing the bread on a staging platform, and a mechanized knife sequentially cutting off each of the four sides.  With a single motor and single input from the user, the bread would have each length of crust precisely removed and be ready for consumption.

After concept generation, the solution of mounting the bread platform on top of a Geneva mechanism was selected.  We were next able to synthesize the human cutting motion by employing a Hoeckens straight line four bar linkage. Motion would be transferred throughout the device by two means, timing belts and bevel gears. 

For the final industrial design of our project, we chose to design a device which would look at home on a kitchen countertop.  Additionally, we wanted to keep the linkages visible so the user could understand the kinematics of the system.