A computer controlled cake surface decorating machine prototype

Abstract

This project consists of the design of a simple CAD/CAM system, the application of which provides for the input to a computer of a drawing consisting of a number of arcs, lines and points using a standard CAD software package such as Autocad. A data matrix file in DXF form is generated for this drawing and is used as input to a 'C' or Basic control program, to transfer the design via a computer controlled cream piping nozzle to the surface of a cake of 12" (30 cm) maximum diameter. The mechanism includes an X-Y-Z Cartesian axis movement of a piping nozzle, a cream pump that extrudes cream to the nozzle via a flexible pipe and a control valve which regulates the flow of cream going into the nozzle. In order to accomplish this movement, a PCL-738B stepping motor control card was employed to control 2 stepper motors, 2 D.C. motors and a linear actuator. Positional feedback was obtained by means of limit switches.