Electronic Halloween Candy dispenser

myminifactory

This object was created in Tinkercad. https://www.tinkercad.com/things/2NdWk4KuW9D\r\nThese files belong to a Halloween candy machine I'm building. The project has two dispensers, each with a stepper motor dispenser, and you press a button to dispense a piece of candy. I entered this in the Treats competition since it dispenses candy and features advanced electronics. Here's how it works: The stepper motor turns, lowering the door to the pipe, and some candy falls out as the door goes back up. I'm using a Particle Electron, connected to the Internet, as the main board. A cool feature is that when you press a button, you receive a text telling you exactly when the button was pressed (I set this up on IFTTT). The lcd works well too! Since the board is constantly connected to wifi, I plan to add a function to tell me how hot it is inside the dispenser and include some sensors on top of the pipes to notify me when the candy is running low. Also, the buttons light up red and fade in and out when it's dark. In the pictures, you might see 'Hang on.... ' on the lcd with seconds counting down after a button press - that's so kids can't spam the button until the countdown is over. All of these pieces took about 100 hours to print (I had to print each file twice since there are two dispensers). There are two different dispenser files because I have two different stepper motors. You can print all the other files twice, except for the dispensers (Candy D. Pt.3-2 and CandyBase). I included all of the .gcode files downloaded from Cura and the .stl files which were downloaded from Tinkercad. The dispenser works really well - there are no clogs, candy falls out nicely, and personally, I haven't found any glitches yet (but be careful not to glue too much into the pipe when assembling). This is all 3D printed because candy would probably get stuck in circular pipes bought from a store, and you save money printing the objects since pipes can be expensive. If you'd like the code or have questions, please email me directly at: jrdmini@icloud.com.\r\nHere are some notes about the files:\r\nCandyBase and Candy D. Pt.3-2 are each of the dispensers (because of the two different steppers). I used an NEMA 17 stepper and another one that was a bit smaller.\r\nCandyCatch is the same thing as CandyOTop-4, except one is .gcode and one is .stl (it's the part that makes sure the wall sliding up doesn't go too far).\r\nPipeConnector and ConnectorPipe are two different files. ConnectorPipe is the pipe that goes straight up, and PipeConnector connects the dispensers and the elbow pipes.\r\nCandyDGears are for the stepper motor and the door that slides up and down