VIDEO LIVE NOW

Check out the youtube video describing this project! (click video button at top of this page) Feel free to contact me with any questions!

Intro

This is my ‘idiot proof’ coffee maker. The idea for it was born after a few too many sleepy mornings where I would stary my coffee maker without putting the mug underneath… And that inevitably ended with me cleaning up a large spill and further delaying my coffee routine.

I competed this project over the course of about a week while taking Mark Rober’s Creative Engineering course on Monthly. The prompt for this build was to solve a problem related to food using a purely mechanical solution, so naturally my coffee troubles immediately came to mind.

Requirements

I first came up with some basic requirements and constraints for the solution. From a requirements standpoint: the device must

1. Stop the machine from activating
2. Detect the presence of a mug in the correct orientation
3. Look clean and well-made
4. Work with a wide range of mugs.

Some additional constraints are that it must be a purely-mechanical solution, and it shouldn’t increase the complexity of the task.

Initial Design

Doing some initial sketches, I started to work out some ideas of how to solve the problem mechanically and ended up with a decent initial solution. I knew that the device would have to physically block the start button on the machine, so I started with a fairly simple flap design that is held on top of the machine.

I prototyped this out of paper and duct tape to get a general idea if it would work. Once I was happy with that, I jumped into Fusion 360 and made a model.

I did a quick 3D print to see how it would work, and I was pretty happy with it. I made a few adjustments to the design and then printed the final product.

Refinements

It was here that I started working on how the coffee mug would actually activate the flap. My initial thought revolved around a pressure plate that would only be activated with the cup in the right orientation. This would then drive the motion of the top flap through a series of gears (see below). I got this from a sketch all the way to a 3D printed prototype but ran into issues getting the correct springs ordered.

At this point there was only about a day remaining in the challenge and I had to quickly pivot and redesign the activation mechanism. This new design, while perhaps a bit more crude, is certainly very effective.

The key element of the design is the placement of the push bar at such a height that it will ‘reject’ the mug if it’s placed upside-down. Having to catch the mug also doubles as an instant wakeup call.

As for the function, the linear motion of this bar is translated into rotational motion, flipping up the top guard flap, and allowing for activation of the machine. Despite being less elegant, after living with this new design for nearly 3 months now, I can say that it is highly functional, and I’m very pleased to report ZERO accidents since the installation of the device.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with the design and it’s certainly been a great quality of life improvement to my coffee maker. This design in an easy retrofit that can be done to many different ‘pod style’ machines with minimal modification (if any)

As a note to any future employers reading this, I’d like to promise that the coffee spills really didn’t happen too often and I’m not actually an idiot, please hire me….