Personalized Toaster: Fall 2018 Gadgetry (24-354)
For my final project in Gadgetry, I worked with a team of 3 other mechanical engineers to design and create a toaster with the ability to toast custom image onto the bread. We retrofitted a toaster and used servos, a type K thermocouple, an Arduino, and a motor.
My primary work in this project was the code and electronics. I also helped with some of the design and component selection.
How it works: A user inputs a binary array, where 1’s represent if a “pixel” gets toasted. The thermocouple reads temperature inside the toaster oven in order to determine the toasting time. The motor pulls a grate, with the toast on top, and the servos move to either block or allow heat (based on the array). After the toasting time has passed, the servos reset and the motor pulls the grate to the new row of pixels until the image is toasted onto the bread.