I knew I needed an auger motion to shuttle food through a pipe into a bowl, or onto the ground in the case of a treat. I wanted to build this on the cheap, so I looked for something at the hardware store and ended up on an inexpensive dirt auger placed inside a PVC pipe. I framed the pipe with some wood so it would be easier to place in a cabinet as a single component i.e. easier to screw into some wood than into PVC to position it.
The pipe the auger is in runs just short of the wood frame so that at the end of the pipe the food will drop out of the box.
The following photo shows one of the 12VDC geared motors that I connected to the auger using a motor shaft coupler. The motor is simply strapped to a piece of wood at the right height so the shafts align, and some rubber pieces were used to prevent any shifting. The "geared" part of the motor means that it has a lot of torque, so if any bits of food get stuck in the PVC the motor is able to push through the food and break it up. I had these from another project where I purchased them directly from China so I don't have a link to exactly the type of motor I used. However a search on eBay for "12V geared motor" will turn up a lot of options if you need to find one for your project. Depending on the type of motor you may need a relay to switch the motor on and off, or the motor may have an option to switch it using low voltage built-in like these have.
No comments:
Post a Comment