Bakers Vendi

Technology is advancing day by day. Automation is the current hype around the world and the entire world is progressing at a great speed towards automation. The manual working phenomenon is gradually decreasing. The vending machines are a bigger step towards the automation field. Not only do they pr

Project Title

Bakers Vendi

Project Area of Specialization

Mechatronics Engineering

Project Summary

Technology is advancing day by day. Automation is the current hype around the world and the entire world is progressing at a great speed towards automation. The manual working phenomenon is gradually decreasing. The vending machines are a bigger step towards the automation field. Not only do they provide comfort and save time and money but also solve bigger problems of space occupancy and increased market competition. Bakeries are well-known to occupy huge space and require huge capital investments on their establishment and later on their maintenance. Therefore, vending machines are a smart solution to end these problems. 

The project operation is to avoid the mishandling of bakery items considering their delicacy and maintaining the freshness and desired temperature of the item as well. Conveyor and lift mechanism will be used for transportation purposes, temperature controlling and modulation for both cold and hot compartments, both sweet and salty items will be served, displaying keypad will be used for purchasing, coin acceptor machine will be used for payment method.  Bakers' Vendi aims to deliver bakery items by maintaining their delicacy and freshness through faster and effective means of automatized machines.

Project Objectives

The main objective of this project is to provide a quick and a fast medium for purchasing bakery items for daily basis. Since, long queues are noticed during weekends, rush hours and the days near festivals. Bakeries are highly occupied and overcrowded so this Bakers' Vendi would provide a simpler and a faster way to buy products related to bakery in a quicker manner.

The designing concept of this project is to introduce a vending machine for bakery items considering the handling of the confectionery items (particularly the cream pastry) due to their delicacy and maintaining the desired temperature for freshness of items.

Project Implementation Method

This project demonstrates the designing and fabrication of a  vending machine for bakery items.  This machine is designed by implementing mechatronic systems and designs, which includes mechanical structures, electronics and computer logics combined.  The operation of this particular vending machine is distinguished from the pre-existing spring vending machines available in Pakistan currently. Due to the fact that it has been designed keeping in mind the handling of delicate bakery items. This project aim is to deliver bakery items by maintaining their delicacy and freshness through faster and effective means of automized machines. This machine will automize and replace conventional bakeries in the future. It is a known fact that dealing with confectionary items requires a lot of care since they are extremely delicate. This is one reason that no one so far has made a vending machine for bakery or confectionary items in Pakistan. Springs are the most well-known mechanism utilized in vending machines to drop packed food items such as chips, biscuits, beverages etc. but bakery items are such delicate eatables that they can get decimated with a fall, therefore the feature in this particular vending is that this project uses a combination of conveyors and lift mechanism. It is highly considered to cater the problem of creating a smooth route for bakery products to reach the exit point of the vending without getting their presentation look like a massacre. A route consisting of a conveyor and a lift mechanism that is going to provide the packed bakery eatables a route with more stability and smoothness and without any drop so that all the factors which can lead to a massacre presentation can be avoided by all means possible. The procedure to delivering bakery items from the vending to the exit as follow. 

• In order to select the desired eatable, the customer needs to select the item number using the keypad that has been already assigned to it.
• Then the customer will insert the amount of the product that he/she intends to buy into the coin acceptor. After the cash is accepted, the machine disposes away the cash in the money box.
• When the machine acknowledges the money deposited in it, the lift will move towards that designated floor (there are two rows and each floor has three columns assigned to it in this vending machine).
• Once the lift has reached that floor, the item number which has been selected will start moving and will transport the items to the lift.
• Then the lift will move towards the base pocket of the machine from where the customer can pick up the eatable.
• Considering that freshness of bakery items the machine has been designed in such a way that one floor has been specified for warm items such as croissants, patties, biscuits etc. while the other for cold items such as pastries, donuts, cakes etc. Both the compartments will be isolated from each other.

Benefits of the Project

1. Bakery items through a vending machine.
2. Save time and money i.e. replacement of expensive business startups and investments in luxury shops with cheap business startups.
3. Industrial automation i.e. replacing manual labor with faster automation service.
4. Easy cash income flow and eradicating all possible sources of money miscalculation due to human error.
5. Maintaining the desired temperature for freshness of items.
6. Low maintenance required compared to bakeries
7. Flexible options to promote growth (No need of marketing or advertisements)
8. Diversify the product ranges of vending machines.

9. Bakers’ Vendi has aimed to achieve the following Sustainable Development Goals:

   Goal 8: Decent work and Economic growth (Achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation, promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, innovation and encourage the growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises)

   Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure (Promote industrialization and foster innovation. Industrialization's job multiplication effect has a positive impact on society, Middle-income countries can benefit from entering the basic and fabricated metals industries)

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

Our goal is to design a vending machine for bakery items by maintaining its freshness and delicacy. To achieve this we designed the outer structure of the vending that holds on to the interior segments of the machine and gives an idea of the overall architecture of the machine i.e., its general size, shape and appearance using L angle Mild Steel having dimensions of 3 ft height, 4 ft width and 3.7 ft breadth.

This vending machine accommodate two floors with three columns each i.e. a total of six columns. The columns are based on flat belt conveyor mechanism. Speed of the conveyors can be controlled via variable motor speed. The dimension of each conveyor is 5.5 x 40 in. sufficient to hold three bakery items of the same type on a single conveyor. The conveyor assembly was fabricated using MS plates having dimensions of about 4.5 inches in height, 20 inches in length and 8 inches in width. Each conveyor assembly has four flange bearings (FL204) of diameter 20 mm each that have been mounted on to rollers. Conveyors are operated using DC geared motor of gear ratio 127.1:1, sufficient of handling the required torque.

The lift plate has been fabricated using MS having dimensions of 35 x 6 in. It has been mounted onto two lead screws, 3 ft long and a pitch of 4 mm each which are coupled with a pulley and two V- belts that is connected to a motor and is used for clockwise and anti-clockwise rotation of the lead screw to control up and down movement of the lift.

IR Sensor Module FC-51 is used for keeping a track of single item dispensing at a time. The reason for opting this sensor is that IR photodiodes are sensitive to IR LED light that falls on the object it strikes. It has an obstacle detection range of 2 - 30 cm and a detection angle of 35 deg. IR sensors will be interfaced with micro-controller ARDUINO MEGA to control single object movement at a time using conveyor motor rotation calculations.

Limit switch Z-15GW_B will be used as safety interlocks for controlling the motion of the lift according to the floor selected by the user. A RS232 numeric keypad will be used as an input to select the item number of the conveyor which will be interfaced with the micro-controller. A H-bridge motor speed sensor module is used for motor speed detection and position limiting purposes.

CH-926 multi coin acceptor is used for payment due to its capability of accepting six kinds of different coins at the same time. It works on material, weight and size to identify coins. It is stable and accurate even under different environmental conditions & can accept coins having a diameter range of 15 - 32 mm, coin thickness range of 1.2 - 3.8 mm. Pakistani 2 and 5 rupee coins have diameters of 25.5 mm & 24 mm respectively

For freshness Peltier TEC 12706 will be used as a cooling element on the cold floor and bulbs will be used on the floor where warm items will be placed to increase the shelf- life of the items. The entire structure will be internally insulated to maintain temperature and prevent energy loss.

Final Deliverable of the Project

HW/SW integrated system

Core Industry

Food

Other Industries

Core Technology

Others

Other Technologies

Sustainable Development Goals

Decent Work and Economic Growth, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com