Skittles, sorted by hand? Absolutely unacceptable. The year is 2015 and if someone wants to sort Skittles (or M&Ms) it has to be done with a 3D printed machine, like the one Nathan Peterson built.
Everything is 3D printed except for the electronics. It uses a TCS3200 for colour sensing. It is powered by 3 DC motors, and has some additional sensors to detect the positions of the discs and to tell when a skittle has been dropped.
Questions such as why would someone sort Skittles by colour are better left unanswered. It’s an impressive funny little gadget that works well.
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10 responses to “Tiny 3D Printed Skittles Sorter Is A Work Of Art”
So you can catalogue the flavour distribution of each packet and demand to know why they don’t fall in line with your preferences of flavour, obviously.
Or you’re making a rider for a fussy rockstar.
And there I am in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, at three o’ clock in the morning, looking for one thousand brown M&M’s to fill a brandy glass, or Ozzy wouldn’t go on stage that night. So, Jeff Beck pops his head ’round the door and mentions there’s a little sweetshop on the edge of town. So, we go, and – it’s closed. So there’s me, and Keith Moon, and David Crosby breaking into this little sweetshop right? Well, instead of a guard dog, they’ve got this bloody great big Bengal tiger. Well I managed to take out the tiger with a can of mace, but the shopowner and his son, that’s a different story altogether… I had to beat them to death with their own shoes… Nasty business really… But sure enough, I got the M&M’s and Ozzy went on stage and did a GREAT show.
It’s so you can mix & match flavours, obviously. Go for the citrus mix with yellow, green and orange, or the berry mix with red and purple… or just a balanced flavour with exactly one of each.
Or you may not like one particular flavour, so by sorting them you can make up a packet with all the *other* flavours represented.
It’s like a cocktail mixer for candy (although Jelly Belly is better for that sort of thing.)
I’m a big fan of doing this, good fun.
As a massive Skittles fanatic this is a highly desirable product; arguably the meditative quality of hand sorting is lost and might lessen the over-all Skittles experience, but the sheer efficiency of hands free Skittle sorting is marvelous. To truly taste the rainbow one must understand the various subtleties of each flavour and to build this appreciation proper sorting technique is essential; this machine makes higher level Skittles appreciation more accessible, something I can really get behind.
On a Skittles related note does anyone feel that the changes they did a while back slightly lessen your enjoyment of the original Skittles fruit flavours? The blackberry to grape change was a positive, but the other flavours all seem to taste a little more similar. I might be crazy though, I’m still annoyed they changed the packaging material.
I work with a guy who would love something like this as he currently does it by hand.
It should load the wheel fully then distribute them all, then refill the wheel. Seems very inefficient currently. Cool gadget though 🙂
Yeah, it definitely looks like it could have been programmed better but still quite cool.