7.6 Conclusions and Future Work

Conclusions

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 as seen in the picture below. We also had to make last-minute additions to prevent the linkage plate from completely 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 be a great project for another group to continue as many improvements and features could be added. 

Future Work

A few things that could improve the mechanism:

• Acrylic instead of wood
• Prevent the linkage plate from falling away from the cam
  • 
• Use a slider crank instead of the cam
• Bearing on the pivot point shaft
• Create a slot to control the movement of the shaker holder
  • 
• Motor controller/Arduino to adjust speeds
• Increase the size to accommodate the actual cocktail shaker
• Couple movements of the cam and linkage 

Our team ran into issues with the wood wearing down, which caused our linkage plate to lean backward and create friction. Using acrylic instead of wood could solve this problem because it is stiffer than wood. We also had issues with the linkage plate going too far to the left and uncoupling from the cam, we were able to temporarily solve this by adding tape. In the future, a wooden lip could be a more permanent fix or a spring could be used to push the plate against the cam and prevent it from uncoupling from the cam. A slider crank could also be used in place of the cam, and it would be connected to the linkage plate, so uncoupling issues would not be a problem. Adding bearings where the pivot shaft and linkage plate meet could decrease the friction it takes to move the linkage plate. 

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, account for a greater shaker mass, and account for the chaotic nature of the contents within the shaker. 

Acknowledgements 

We would like to thank Connor, Professor Symmank, and TIW. 

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