In this video we demonstrate using the Cakebot GUI and also printing a spiral design on a cake.

who's ready for cake?

Four students in Principles of Engineering (ENGR2210) came together to build a cake-decorating robot after seeing the wonderful work done by industrial cake-decorating machines. The CAKEBOT was designed as a for-personal-use machine to decorate (pre-frosted) 9-inch round cakes and generate a border on the bottom of the walls of the cake as well. Users can draw images in the graphical user interface (GUI) with different "brushes" (or tips) and those images are converted into mechanical motions on a polar coordinate system to generate the image using the top frosting dispenser and a border using the side frosting dispenser. Once the design is finished, the user is able to remove their decorated cake from the platform and enjoy!

Project Goals

We launched this project with an ambitious vision of a machine that would be able to decorate the top and sides of a pre-frosted round cake with designs provided by a user via a user-friendly interface. Over the course of the project, we developed a core set of goals:
  • Create a mechanism that can smoothly and accurately dispense frosting
  • Create a gantry system that will allow the frosting dispenser to produce designs over the entire top surface of the cake
  • Include a mechanism to produce boarders on the wall of the cake
  • Create a user-friendly interface to allow users to design their own cake
  • Include a system for users to change frosting tips, allowing for more intricate designs

overall  system   diagram  

Picture

meet the team.

cassie brown, mechanical engineering

Cassie Brown, Class of 2016 (Olin College of Engineering). Cassie is pursuing a Mechanical Engineering degree. For the Cakebot, she designed and built the frame of the Cakebot as well as the mechanisms to drive the rotating platform that the cake sits on and drive the linear motion of the frosting pump that moves above the cake. Cassie has enjoyed decorating cakes by hand for many years and was thrilled to get the opportunity to combine that hobby with her love for building mechanical systems.

emily engel, mechanical systems

Emily Engel, Class of 2017 (Olin College of Engineering). Emily's major is Engineering: Materials Science. She worked on mechanical systems with Cassie, particularly designing the frosting dispensing mechanism. She recently dove into the world of cake decorating in the form of a Passionate Pursuit and wanted to fill her semester with cake, so she was thrilled to be a part of Cakebot!

Christina Holman, electrical systems

Christina Holman, Class of 2017 (Wellesley College). Christina  is majoring in Economics and is pursuing the 4+1 Engineering B.S. program with Olin College in Electrical and Computer Engineering. For Cakebot, she worked on the electrical systems to translate the software commands into mechanical movements by designing and forming circuitry in addition to developing Arduino code.

Griffin   tschurwald, software

Griffin Tschurwald, Class of 2017 (Olin College of Engineering). Griffin is pursing a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). For Cakebot, he designed and wrote all of Cakebot's Python GUI and control code. He enjoys eating cake just as much as decorating it. Griffin's Github account.

Budget   &  Bill of materials

We were constrained to a $250 budget. The large hardware requirements caused our team to go over budget, but without the materials we used for prototyping, we could be within that budget.