The beginning

After some research I quickly got an idea of ​​a number of standard components that I will need. The most essential are the drink bottle holders. These holders ensure that when a drinks bottle is clamped, a standard 'measure' of the drink flows into a chamber. By pressing the glass against the holder you ensure that this 'measure' enters the glass, after which the room will fill again.

Without these holders, filling the glass will have to be done in a different way. For example, through hoses and pumps, in my opinion this looks less nice than a physical bottle that hangs upside down. Fortunately, I soon saw an advertisement on marktplaats and also in the same city. The first components are in-house.

Step 2, operating the drink bottle holders, you do this by pressing the glass against the bottom with some force. Now I don't want to push the glass up, it quickly seems unstable to me and I want to prevent the chance of the glass breaking due to the force of motors. That is why the idea to design a 'presser' that can press against the drink holders with the force of a stepper motor. The drink then falls down and hopefully into the glass.

OTo carry out the first test, in addition to the drink bottle holders, I also need a stepper motor with associated control. For the control I chose an Arduino and TB6600 stepper motor driver.

Moving the 'presser' up and down will be done via a long spindle, for stability I also need guide rods.

As you can see I made a fairly simple design for the printer. The first test was successful! The stepper motor can exert enough pressure to push the beverage bottle holder. Now on to the next step, drawing a complete 1st version of the entire machine in Solidworks. At the same time, there will be many ambiguities that need to be resolved during design.

How will the machine work? Which control do I want to use, Arduino? Raspberry Pi? How big should the machine be? How am I going to make the machine spin? In short, plenty to do!