Little Twister

Imagine you are a little kid watching your parents eating spaghetti at the dinner table. You want to be able to enjoy that plate with them, but your tiny fingers will not let you twirl the fork. Now there is a solution to your cravings. For my project, I invented a small rotating fork for young children to use, so they too can enjoy a delicious bowl of spaghetti. This fork requires little to no effort to twirl up a beautiful chunk of noodles. The fork has a low RPM motor to make sure the meal stays in the plate, and can turn on and off quickly. With its thick handle and small head, this fork is the perfect utensil for little kids.

Materials used:

• PLA Filament
• AA Battery
• Solder
• Connecting Wires
• Double-Sided Mounting Tape
• Electrical Tape
• 3V Micro Planetary Reducer Motor High Torque DC Motor DIY Robot Gearbox Motor (9161C)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N7PY71F?ref_=cm_sw_r_apin_dp_76J75MTZ9AC89C8QXGRW&language=en-US&th=1

In this step, I designed the shape of the fork. For the body of the fork, my plan was to have the battery and motor both fit inline with the body to conceal them. I acquired the dimensions of the battery and motor, and designed accordingly. Next, to have the motor actually attach the fork, I created a connecter with the shape of the gear cut into it, allowing the connector to be secured onto the motor. Finally, to finish off he body of the fork, I created the head. Using Shapr3d, I sketched out the shape of the fork, extruded it, and smoothed it to allow for it to grip the noodles.

To make the fork spin, I had to power the motor using connector wires and a AA Battery. First step to powering the motor was to solder a red and black connector wire to both the terminals of the wire. After soldering the wires, I attached them to the positive and negative side of the battery, red to positive, and black for negative. In the end, I tucked the wires into the body of the fork to hide them.

Now that everything is prepared, it is time to seal everything off. To prevent any electrical shortages, I used electrical tape to cover the motor. Then, because the motor kept hitting the body while inside, I placed double-siding mounting tape as padding to prevent the back of the motor from coming in contact with anything. After, I secured the motor, the wires were shortened, so they would be manageable. There was one more problem to fix at the end, and that was the fork head coming loose from the motor. Using a very small piece of a connector wire as a pad, the fork head was now tightly secured to the motor.

With everything finished, it was time to celebrate with a nice steaming bowl of noodles to test it out. A bowl of noodles was cooked, and the fork was tried. The test was a success and now kids can enjoy twisting spaghetti with no effort.