The Baller: The sleek dough ball making home appliance
Overview
The Challenge: Design a stand alone system that portions and forms balls of bread dough, meat and cookie dough.
Requirements:
Balls are to be formed from raw bulk mixtures.
System should be able to form balls of 0.75”, 1.5” and 2.5” diameter.
Size should be pithing a volume of 12x12x6 excluding feeding mechanism.
Balls should be roughly spherical in shape and without voids larger than 10% of their volume.
Duration: 4 weeks
Team: Solo Project
Motivation
After working at Larsen & Toubro Technology Services for 2 months, I wanted to take the initiative for a design project. I approached my manager after the first two months of training and asked him if I could work on a project for him. He gave me the freedom of brainstorming a few ideas and later he was kind enough to let me work on a project for a client that was on hold.
This is how The Baller was born.
Target Audience
Home Owners and Baking/Cooking Enthusiasts
This device is aimed to be a home appliance and is targeted for people who need to make meat, bread or cookie dough balls on a regular basis. This device would help them create 3 different sized dough balls from a raw bulk mixture.
Final Design
A portable,
simple and
aesthetic design
This device includes a total of 6 attachments that can be used to make the three different sized dough balls. A compact device like this, runs on just one motor as an input that drives the cutting mechanism and the shaping disk.
Dimensions: 12x13x14 inches
Mass: ~40 lbs
Component Break Down
Transparent Cover
System Base
Shaping and Sorting System
Shaping Disk
DC Motor
Cutting Mechanism (quick-return scotch yoke)
Raw mixture feeding system
Working
Future Improvements
Dough Input
The current design does not include an automatic feeder for the raw bulk, the speed and force depends on the user which may cause inconsistencies in the size of the dough balls.
Efficient Attachments
There are 6 separate attachments for the user in the current deign, which may be a little inconvenient. Having a circuit and buttons to control the sorting and cutting attachments would be a more efficient method.
Weight
The current weight of the system is higher than anticipated for a home appliance. Using a frame structure for the entire design would be better than the current design which includes some unnecessary blocks of material.