Week 1 - Dog Tooth Clutch

In order to dispense toppings into our carriage, we need some way to rotate and Archimedes screw. However, putting a stepper motor on each topping tube would be quite expensive. Instead, we had originally planned to drive them using a gear on the main carriage that can move around between stations, and thus use a single motor for all the topping tubes.

However, this presents a problem of rigidity. If the topping tube is allowed to flex at all, the forces between the gears would cause them to pull apart, and skip. Naturally, we need another solution.

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The solution? Dog-clutches.

We quickly prototype and print a self centering dog clutch that forces the two halves together as they rotate, but can easily pull apart by reversing the rotation.

These have the added bonus that if there are slightly misaligned, they still engage and pull each other into concentric alignment.