Will this straw feeder work?

Question

I'm building a machine to make drinks and I would like to be able to put a straw into the cup. To achieve this, I need to build some kind of mechanism, that will be able to feed me with one straw on demand.
What I was thinking about is some V-shaped box where all the straws will be stored, with a hole at the bottom, but there will be a gear blocking the hole, so the straws will not fall out of the box. However, the gear will have a cut in it and will be rotating. So each turn, one straw will fall into this cut. Something like this:

Will it work? Or is there any better way of achieving this?
Thanks.

Chris Johns · Answer

Mechanisms like this can work, although I think in this case you would be better with one roller mounted directly under the hopper. As it is the two cutouts don't line up untill the 3 and 9 o'clock positions so there is nothing to s top both notches trying to grab a straw each and ending up with both trying to occupy the same space.

You should also be prepared for a lot of fine adjustment in prototyping to get it to work properly. I've worked on a few mechanisms like this and they tend to be a bit of a nightmare to get right.

You also need to ask yourself whether you really need an automatic straw dispenser. Presumably at some point a human being will pick up the drink in their hands and is it really a benefit to save them the effort of picking up a straw from a manual dispenser?

Will this straw feeder work?

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