Hey guys!
I've started familiarizing myself with some Arduino tech, and had the idea of making a liquid mixing station.
If I calculated right, I would be able to connect 64 peristaltic pumps to a single board, thus making it possible to have 60 different flavorings, PG, VG and nic connected (and a separate bottle of water for cleaning out the tubing between batches).
I would also like to add a heating panel + magnetic mixer for the full effect. Of course I'm not thinking about 1l+ batches, more like 2-300ml, or maybe half a liter tops.
The software is relatively easy, it will consist of two parts, the core, which controls the pumps and heating+mixing, and in a future upgrade maybe, monitors juice consistency using a few cameras. But for now, let's keep it simple and stupid.
The second part would be a web interface, which would partly be based, or even connected to, my e-juice recipe system that I'm still working on. There the user could put their recipe together, even save it, and have it made into a batch. All the user has to do is to add the pitcher + magnetic mixing stick, enter the recipe, and pull the finished product out of it when it starts beeping or whatever.
It should also be possible to connect a fixed tablet into it, basically adding a screen, so instead of using your phone to connect to it, you could simply enter the recipes on the device itself. Or even control it remotely!
What do you guys think? I know, it is a lot of work, and I will be prototyping a lot (about a year or so!), so any help is appreciated, but I think it would be cool if my creation found its way to some B&M's around the world!
/u/CarbonFire3DPrints has a similar idea, Here!
I saw that, that gave some inspiration about the whole structure at first, which I've redesigned :)
Glad I could help! I'm currently redesigning myself, switching from syringes to
http://hackaday.com/2014/09/16/a-3d-printed-peristaltic-pump/
(Look at the comment section of https://hackaday.io/project/6491-the-end-of-an-evil-industry for more ideas)
I sent you a PM as well. Please follow and give my project a skull on hackaday to support me and get updates! Currently doing pretty damn well, I'm almost positive I'm in the next round.
This sounds pretty awesome. I want one. :D
Stand in the line ;) Dunno what will be the final price, I mean what I had in mind was fully automated, all you need to do is replace/refill the ingredients, plus empty the "dirty water" can from time to time.
I'm still undecided on the pump system though. Peristaltic pumps are good, cheap, easy to use, but not that precise. Pressurized canisters of ingredients would work, but is a good step up the price - talking about 10x more expenses on just the pump system. And they are about 10x more precise.
Really cool idea! I could definitely see this kind of thing working well in a vape shop. Pick a recipe from a tablet, tweak it, or input your own and watch it spit out the juice!
One thing you might want to look into for the flavor dispensing is a set of syringe pumps. That should allow you to get more accurate measurements, particularly if working with small (15ml) batches. You'd still probably want a peristaltic pump for VG/PG, as it's a bitch to push through a syringe.
Have you ever looked closely at the inner workings of a professional paint mixing machine? It sounds like there could be some similarities that might help,you on your journey. Just a thought but that's what it kind of reminded me of on a smaller scale.
It is almost exactly the same, but I want it to be 100% custom built :) We are a community of tinkerers and free-thinkers, buying commercially available stuff is simply not our style ;)
I agree that a paint mixer would work fine on bigger batches, 1l and over. But I don't want that big volumes. It's more of a show-off for B&Ms, and lazy home mixers. If I ever get to "mass produce" it, I'm going to design a for-show model (fancy looking front, LED lights, etc., to make it look cool).
I have been tinkering around with this same idea for a few months and I think the best approach is to use a specific cheap bottle type for the flavors and make it modular / hot swappable. You assign a title to each of the 60 bays and create or import recipes to be loaded and executed.
What would be nice is to integrate this with something like e-liquid-recipes.com and make the recipe portion of the software base itself off of that existing tool. Flavor names and recipes would need to be more standardized than they currently are though
I'm working on exactly the same thing you're describing ;) The flavour bottles would be the regular 100ml bottles we use, or even the 500ml standard bottles used for medicine.
Not titles, but specific flavours could be assigned to each and every bay, though I might've miscalculated with the 60. It is more likely 50 (biggest Arduino to date has 54 digital ports, which means 1 PG, 1 VG, 1 Nic and 1 cleaning water, + 50 flavours), but even that should be enough for the largest liquid manufacturers.
For the online connection - my plan is to integrate part of my WIP recipe system (called eJuicer), and be able to connect the final product to your account, and then just use the web interface to mix your liquids.
As my site would be following your stock too, it could easily determine which recipes you can mix.
I'm picturing an eliquid vending machine. Sort of like those new soda fountains that have 11ty different flavors. Pretty cool idea. You might be onto something there.
Something like that... but it is more of a mixer's station. It heats and mixes the flavour and base, so it's not exactly vending. Though that could be easily done too, on the same principle!
You said you want to see it in B&M's. That's the only way I can see it happening. It would be fun for customers who want to make their own custom blends without all of the DIY startup costs and good for shop owners who don't want to bother with it themselves.