Housing
Check parts and clear openings.
Assembly
From printed part to finished device.
After printing, all parts came together: housing, pumps, tubes, electronics and display. Here is the documentation of how that happened step by step.
4 assembly steps
Electronics
Tinkering included
Assembly sequence
Pumps
Insert pumps and route tubes.
Electronics
Connect Raspberry Pi, relay and power supply.
Test
Boot the Pi and test everything thoroughly.
Step 1
1
Prepare the housing.
First, all parts were prepared: Sawing openings? Are the openings for cables, tubes and the display large enough? Whatever was still in the way was smoothed out or reworked.
This sounds like little, but if the housing is not right, the rest causes problems.
- Drill tube routing holes
- Saw the housing to size
- Clean everything up again
Step 2
2
Insert pumps and tubes.
The pumps were secured and wired up. Then the tubes were connected — from the container through the pump to the outlet.
Tubes must not kink, otherwise the pump does not feed properly. That actually did not work on the first attempt and had to be re-routed.
- Align and secure pumps
- Connect tubes
- Check flow direction
Step 3
3
Wire up the electronics.
Raspberry Pi, relay module and power supply were positioned inside the housing and wired up. The GPIO pins of the Pi control the pumps via the relay.
Before applying power, I checked all connections one more time. Better to look once too many than to burn something out.
- Install electronics
- Organise cable routing
- Check connections before switching on
Step 4
4
Mount display and test.
The touch display was installed and connected to the Pi. Then came the first real test: start the UI, select a drink and see whether the correct pump starts running.
It didn't quite work on the first attempt — then the problem was fixed and everything was tested again.
- Mount display
- Start software
- Test the complete system in a trial run
Looking back
Without good preparation, assembly won't work.
Because all dimensions and openings were already considered during printing, there were hardly any problems during installation. That was the moment where it became clear whether the planning beforehand had been right — and it had been.