Conclusion and Improvement Opportunities

Future work involves improving functionality and stability properties of the mechanism. Namely:

• The ability to open real bottle-caps. Our mechanism is limited to silicone bottle-caps due to the lower torque requirement. This can be overcome by use of a more powerful motor, or the deployment of an appropriate gear train. Moreover, making the base plate out of aluminum would be required as it is unclear whether acrylic could reliably withstand the greater forces.
•  More rigid connections between links. The use of mounting hubs with set screws proved to be functional, but over time the screws would slightly loosen, which in part caused unwanted play in the system.
• Aligned carriage rod. As the main sliding link, it is not ideal for our carriage rod to be skewed at an angle. This is caused by our ad-hoc addition of screws into our plastic cup holder; in the future, the design should be updated to incorporate this.
• Constant pouring position. Currently, the end-user has to slightly move their cup to track the opening of the bottle. A better experience would allow for the user to simply hold the cup at a fixed position throughout the mechanism's motion.