Pepper Grinder
The inspiration for this post came during dinner with my family. This project seemed to be fairly straight forward, however once I got going I realized that the bottom grinding mechanism was harder to figure out then I first thought. For the grinding mechanism I decided to use two tapered gear-like parts. They were created by making a tapered cylinder and then lofting between sketches on the top and bottom faces. The single loft was then circular patterned. The center grinding wheel, as well as the top cap, both have square holes cut into them so that a square shaft connects them. This allows the top to be rotated, transferring the rotary motion to the grinder. The three main parts of the body were made using revolve features. A little creativity was needed to come up with a system to hold the gears in place. Download the model below to get a closer look at how I did it. Enjoy!
Ian Jutras
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Mechanical Engineering 2013