The M&M sorter was a JOURNEY. It's not a new idea, or even a particularly useful one, but it's one I wanted to pursue to improve my abilities in three areas: aesthetics, ease of use, and multi-part CAD (Computer Aided Design). My goals were to get a decent-looking, self-contained, and functional M&M sorter that I could mostly 3-D print straight from CAD. It wasn't an easy project to see through, but sticking with it is exactly what got me the aesthetics, usability, and CAD chops I was after.
This project involved weeks of designing and prototyping mechanism after mechanism to move exactly one M&M from a hopper to an internal sensor and finally a precise chute, hundreds of times in a row, with minimal mistakes. Getting there took more tuning, wire management, and finessing than any electronics project I had tackled before. It turned out well, and I'm proud to share it.
