CAKEBOT: Team Meeting I

At our team meeting on Sunday after the first spring review, the crew decided to become familiar with the field at hand. We baked and decorated a 9-inch cake for observation.

Baking the cake did take a portion of time and for the majority of that time, the team discussed ways in which we could extrude frosting. Emily and Cassie had taken a field trip to a Baking Store and found a Wilton Decorator Pro, which consisted of a plunging mechanism to extrude frosting from the attached storage container. Additionally, the tool allowed for interchangeable tips to create circles, stars, and waves. We took such a luxury into account for our design too. We reversed-engineered the Decorator Pro to understand how we could ensure that the frosting was forced out at a constant pressure. The Mechanics sub-team (Cassie and Emily) discussed how to remove the springs in order to directly integrate the equipment into the CAKEBOT, attaching the plunging arm to a motor for vertical movement. By then, the cake had been baked and layered.

Cassie -- the designated bakery girl -- was able to make her own frosting to test how consistency would affect the quality of any designs, and, of course, it does. Thicker recipes of frosting require greater force to push out of the Decorator Pro but also allow for more solid designs on the cake and continuous flow. Lighter recipes are easier to extrude but don't stick to each other well.

With a homemade frosting, we used a disposable frosting bag to store the icing and dispense "stars" around the cake. Cassie demonstrated how changes in angles affect the overall star as well as how long a bag was held at a spot. We also noted the difficulties in ensuring all the frosting is forced to the end, not lagging on the upper sides. Such notes were taken for how to integrate the extruder with the other software and electronics components. We have yet to do so and hope to bring a better review after this second sprint.

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