Bagel making machine

My local bagel shop has really just two or three machines they use (plus one human) to make tasty bagels every day.

The Mixer
The Dough Roller
The Conveyor Oven
(Plus one human and a butcher block countertop)

You might also say the sink (which is involved in cleaning) is part of this system.

Could we make an open source reprap style machine that did all of this? Would some of the subsystems of this machine also be necessary subsystems for other possible machines?

The episodes of How It’s Made are super useful.

Do you have other good resources?

This video shows how screw feeders can be used to distribute powdered ingredients:

Powder feeders would, I think, be an important component of many submodules. That means a small project to design an open source powder feeder would be a nice, bite-sized place to start.

Maybe a university student could design a 3D printable powder feeder operated by a stepper motor?

I think designing various mechanisms like this would be a great start in creating some kind of modular, automated production system. I’ve also done a lot of research into various manufacturing and production techniques and while there is a lot of variety depending on the volume of production and such, there is also a lot of similarity across industries even for similar operations such as feeding various materials, heating, coating, mixing and so forth.

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