Push Button. Receive Bacon.

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Push Button. Receive Bacon.
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Hammerspace will be bringing Push Button – Receive Bacon to Maker Faire Kansas City this weekend.

 

There is little of greater importance to a maker than their hands. These magnificent tools help us give shape to ideas. So let’s take a moment to discuss hand health.

The hand of the maker can often become dry and cracked from frequent washings and exposure to glues and paints and other hazards.

Much like a good cast-iron skillet, hands must be re-seasoned periodically with a liberal application of bacon.

You may have seen a bacon dispenser in a public washroom and been completely unaware of its important role in hand health. Some users wander away before their pork based health strip can be prepared or gluttonous users may have depleted the magazine of its bacony goodness.

Here at Hammerspace workshop, we have improved the standard bacon dispenser with these faults in mind.

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In order to encourage good hand health, the improved bacon dispenser displays a progress meter to reassure the user that bacon arrival is imminent. A multi-segment display was CNC routed in the shape of bacon and populated with 10mm LEDs. A standard bacon dispenser relay board controls this display.

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To entertain and inform the user, a variety of bacon themed pop music will be dispensed immediately and continuously until bacon has been provided. An Adafruit audio FX board stores and plays back the .ogg files containing the bacon related wisdom and culture.

The Push Button – Receive Bacon machine has an extended magazine to supply bacon strips on command. For this prototype we have used a Sharper Image CD Power Tower to hold the bacon strips until they can be used to save a hand. The shelves are constructed of plasma cut stainless steel and held in place with 3d printed clips that mount into the original device as if the bacon shelf was a jewel case. The tabs that are already present in the tower provide a kind of encoder to ensure repeatable precision and smooth delivery of the bacon. The folding flap design allows for tighter clearance between the bacon magazine and the bacon encrispenator.

The bacon encrispenator is of the standard conveyor type with the usual quartz heating elements. You may have seen a type of encrispenator in use at your local sandwich shop.

And finally, the bacon motivator receives the bacon from the encrispenator and uses vibrational motivation to deliver the hot bacon down a custom engineered stainless chute.

The user then receives the bacon from the bacon nozzle in the usual fashion. After applying the bacon to both palms, the bacon may be eaten to replace lost electrolytes.

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It is our sincere hope that our efforts will improve the hand health of our local maker community.

If you are an active maker, do your hand a favor and rub some bacon on it.

Discuss this article with the rest of the community on our Discord server!
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Dave Dalton

Dave Dalton is the owner and operator of Hammerspace, Kansas City’s makerspace. He has been making and breaking things ever since his grandfather showed him how to put a steam engine in a Ford Pinto, and has been metal casting and smithing since his teens.

View more articles by Dave Dalton

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