Introduction & Motivation

This project came about from a friend in a small apartment that used the Nespresso pod system to make coffee. The idea was to have use the boxes the pods come in as cartridge that would insert into a 3D printed housing, dispensing one pod at a time. The finished design is shown below, which uses a couple rubber bands to keep the lid closed.

The user inserts a new box of pods into the top of the device, which secures it in place with the vertical rips which apply pressure to sides of the boxes (which vary slightly in size depending on the flavor). The slanted surface meets the angle of the box once it is opened:

Early prototype issues

Early prototypes showed a number of issues, most of which are caused by the random orientation of the pods within the box. The design must be able to handle all orientations.

The initial lid design would catch on the pod tops, so this ledge was filled in with a chamfer:

Initial realization that the box sizes change per flavor of pod: