This DIY Food Dispenser Automatically Measures Out Your Meal Ingredients

Some of you like to live life on the edge and probably just guesstimate your ingredients when you’re preparing a meal. But lots of people prefer to be more precise and measure out the exact ingredient proportions every time they cook. That can get really repetitive and boring if you’re often cooking similar meals with the same ingredients. You probably make a lot of meals that call for salt, pepper, flour, etc., and it would be much easier if the proper amounts could be automatically dispensed into your mixing bowl. That’s why YouTuber Elite Worm built this motorized food dispenser to do exactly that.

Before we get into the details of this build, we should point out that this machine has a number of 3D-printed parts that come into contact with the food. The plastic for those parts may not be toxic, but the tiny grooves between layer lines are a perfect place for bacteria to collect and reproduce. It’s probably okay for dry ingredients like Elite Worm is using, but it’s best to simply avoid using 3D-printed parts for any project that will come into contact with food.

With that disclaimer aside, let’s talk about how this machine actually works. Ingredients are loaded into the four available hoppers. Then, whenever it is time to make a meal, the user selects the ingredient amounts on a touchscreen. A motor then starts shaking all four hoppers up and down. At the bottom of each hopper, there is a chute that is opened by a servo. Each chute is opened one at a time to dispense the ingredient into the mixing bowl. The weight is measured as ingredients are dispensed in order to ensure that the amounts are exactly right.

The touchscreen and machine operation are controlled by a Microchip ATmega328P microcontroller. Elite Worm designed a custom PCB for the microcontroller and complementary components, which was manufactured by Next PCB. All of the plastic parts were fabricated on a Prusa i3 MK2 3D printer. We would have liked to see food-safe hoppers used here, but the concept is still a good one for dispensing common ingredients when preparing meals.