There were some challenges that we faced. The challenge that we faced the most was that the motor was not strong enough, or the containers movement was not stable. The motor we used was not strong enough to lift all the food, so we had to put it at a slant to distribute the weight across the feeder. The container was originally designed to push up the food and then it would fall out a hole, but when the container was pushed up, the container would fall over. We scrapped that idea and went with a wheel that would push out the food, and it was more feasible than the last idea.In the process of doing this project, we learned that dc motors are not the strongest and we needed to not put all the weight on the motor, or else it would not work.
Our next steps would be to build the feeder with plywood and nails, instead of cardboard, duct tape, and hot glue, and replace the DC motor with a stronger one. If someone else is going to build this, I would recommend them to use a more powerful motor than a DC motor.The cost was estimated to be about $16.50. This includes plywood for structure, the DC motor for the automatic part, a couple thin steel rods that can be used as axles. On the Paper Mech website, we found a simple machine to push up and down a platform, but that idea was eventually scrapped due to the platform not being stable. http://www.papermech.net/up-down-crank/
