Black Box M&M Dispenser

This was the final project in Foundations of Product Realization (ME 102). The goal was to design, print, and assemble a fully-functional prototype of an M&M dispenser that incorporates a spring, and is able to dispense at least ten M&Ms.

Overview

Created to hide the mechanism (a Black Box system), the dispenser is actuated by a lever on the front to dispense one M&M with every separate actuation.

Mechanism

Actuation: pushing on lever rotates the disc so that the pocket lines up with a hole at the end of the actuation, leading to a loaded M&M falling through.

Reload: Releasing the lever causes the attached pre-loaded spring to snap back the disc so that the hole is in line with the funnel, causing a new M&M to be in the pocket, waiting for actuation.