VII. Conclusions and Future Work - Pizza Cutter

Much of the improvements that could be made for our device involve upgrading materials to increase robustness. In our prototype, the acrylic links are flexible and the 3D printed link pins are fragile. Under stress, these two components would be at high risk of failure. The plastic gears could also be at risk of failure under higher loads. If we were to create an industry-ready form of this device, we would want to use metal links, metal pins, and metal gears to reduce the chances of failure. 

We would also determine a way to mate the platform to the vertical shaft without screw heads protruding from the top. When we had a full size blade mounted, it would sometimes get caught on these screws and stop the machine.

Another improvement could be made in our driving motor. The 360 degree servo in use does well to demonstrate the motion of the mechanism, but might not be able to operate reliably under stress. Replacing this servo with a higher torque motor would be important if we wanted to cut through a pizza.

Our 3D pizza cutting blade could also be replaced with a real circular blade to be more effective.

Lastly, the whole design could be scaled up to cut full-size pizzas rather than just personal 6" ones.

Overall, the device would require improvements in order to cut a pizza. However, our design does well to demonstrate the coupled motion of the Geneva mechanism and lambda mechanisms, and how this can be used for a purpose like cutting pizzas.