Hamburger Vending Machine

The crown jewel of my engineering career thus far has been creating a hamburger vending machine. I led a team of six engineers to design and build this during our senior year of school. The final product is something people will walk up to, press a button, and can expect a hamburger every single time.  

Faced with a strict $500 budget and commercial reliability targets, we needed a compact, low-cost system for safe heating and dispensing. I developed the frame, dropper, and oven control in SolidWorks and KiCad, and negotiated with steel and electronics vendors to source all the parts within budget. 

This project was super educational. Everything from patent research, material selection, thermal analysis, programming, designing a PCB, negotiating prices, ordering parts, to the actual fabrication. Even bringing a 4x10 steel sheet up a flight of stairs was its own unique challenge. And our design probably changed 30 times as we learned what was and wasn't possible. But my team never gave up and we did a really great job.

During the last week of class, my group and I presented the vending machine to hundreds of people at our school's student union. We prepared dozens of burgers ahead of time to feed our hungry customers, many of which were our professors and even the dean! Even the strictest teachers said the burgers were delicious, and we joked it was the first 10/10 they ever gave.