2. Team Members

3. Being engineering students and drinking alcohol every weekend (most of us), we decided to put the two together and create a project that uses engineering techniques to serve alcoholic beverages. Our project the ‘Drink-O-Matic’ will prompt a user to input their beverage of choice, quantity, and type of mix. From here the device does all the work. It will automatically fill any size cup, without over filling, and the users can ‘slam’ back their drink.

4. The design of this project changed a number of times during the planning process. Some of the ideas from initial to final planning are as follows: A water fountain that would automatically fill a standard sized glass. A water fountain that would automatically fill any size glass without the glass overfilling. A device that mixes one liquor and one drink mix and also fills a glass without overfilling. A device that mixes 3 different liquor with a corresponding drink and fills a glass without overfilling. The ‘Drink-O-Matic’ which allows the user to pick any combination of the 3 different liquors and 3 drink mixes and the quantity of liquor wanted in each drink. It will also fill any size glass without overfilling.

5. Our final design encompassed everything previously mentioned and more to create the ultimate user friendly drink preparer. The main components of our design include: Distance sensor Stepper motor LCD A series of sanitary solenoid valves from our own design. Four Buttons A series of tubing to direct the flow of liquid. A mechanical arm linked to the stepper motor through a belt system which provides vertical movement to measure the height of the glass to be filled.

6. Concept Diagram

7. User Interface

8. Circuit Diagrams

10. Solenoid valves did not work as expected. Could not find affordable sanitary valves. Difficulty finding suitable springs. Difficulty finding solenoids which would create enough force to open the solenoid valves. Difficulty finding tubing which would be soft enough for the springs to hold closed. Technical Services The manufacture of our frame was slightly delayed due to the unfortunate and unexpected sicknesses and other issues that could not be avoided.

11. From our experience working on the Drink-O-Matic we have a few recommendations for the next brave souls that want to tackle a similar project. Sanitary valves are expensive. To construct your own the specifications of the springs, tubes, and solenoids must be known in advance to be able to conduct the necessary calculations to ensure the design will work. Understand your budget and its limitations. Hidden wheels Refrigeration system

12. Although we had a few problems to overcome throughout the process in the end we accomplished the main aspects of the project that we set out to do. Everything was a success except for the operation of the solenoid valves. Though the valves did actually operate, their performance was very poor and as a result hindered the performance of our system as a whole. There were a number of reasons why this was the cause such as the strength of the solenoid valves and materials used in manufacture. All of which were beyond our control. As a group we have much confidence in our product if it had correctly operating solenoid valves.