Delightful Interactive Toddler Spoon

The Concept

Feeding toddlers is a problem for the parents because the toddlers tend to lose their interest easily. Therefore they refuse eating their food and get attracted by other things surrounding them.

Delightful Spoon is an interactive toddler spoon that aims to attract toddlers during the meal time. Thanks to the capacitive touch sensor, every time the toddler puts the spoon into his/her mouth the spoon lights up charmingly.

http://youtu.be/g0rnJvP9Q_o

In order to be sure about the dimensions of the spoon shell, the assembly of the inner parts such as the battery, wires, capacitive sensor and LEDs are needed. Therefore, this step is coming before the CAD process. For the Delightful spoon we will be using momentary stand-alone capacitive touch switch by Adafruit, a 3.7V rechargeable lithium-ion battery and a copper tape to increase the sensitivity so that the sensor switch can sense the magnetic fields of food and the lips to light up the LEDs inside.

We will be using the 3D modelling software Rhinoceros 5 in this step. The 3D modeling steps are as the following: inserting a picture frame that helps us a guideline to draw the curves of the spoon. Then, using the "networksrf" command to create the organic solid shape out of the curves of the spoon. After creating the shell, we will split the whole shape into two pieces as top and bottom pieces so that we can print the shells as hollow and place the circuit inside of it.

You can also download the 3D file here with this link

In order to prepare the CAD drawing to be printed on a 3D printer, the file should be exported as .stl format. Then .stl file is imported to the 3D printer’s software. In this case, we will be using the Dimension 3D printer. Be sure that you export your 3D file as .stl format. After placing the file into the Dimension 3D printer's software, we will wait for approximately 3 hours for the spoon to be printed. Finally, we will place our spoon inside of the chemical bath box to get rid of the supporting material.

After completing the construction of each part of the Delightful Spoon, the next step is assembling these parts. Now our spoon is ready to react when it touches to our lips and the food.