Portion Cup

Portion Cup was a cup-denesting module for Hyphen’s automated food-assembly line. Its task was to separate nested portion cups and send them into the receiving path below. The design brought cup guides, helices, drive trains and sensing interfaces together in repeating four-channel rows.

I took the system from early denesting concepts through full cabinet-level subsystem design. My work included initial validation and the start of next-generation development. The surviving layouts and assembly photographs show the mechanical scope, from a single cup interface to the cabinet layout around the rows.

Separate the nested cups

The cup rim was the working interface. In section, the helices sit around the stack and meet successive rims at different heights. Their screw-shaped surfaces were intended to move a cup downward while supporting the cups above it.

Each cup position uses three helices linked through an internal ring gear and smaller pinions. The drive sits around the opening, leaving the middle clear for the cup. The bill of materials specifies acetal helices and ring gears, stainless shafts and pinions, and machined aluminum drive housings.

Fit the interfaces around the stack

Packaging the electronics meant working around the same stack geometry. An annotated layout study explores keeping the sensors inside the enclosure. It describes the outer board positions as potentially workable and the inner pair as more constrained, then asks for connector orientation, plugs and wire specifications so bend radius and service-loop space can be assessed.

The parts list separates a cup-drop sensor from a low-cup sensor, each with its own mounting parts. Their intended roles were to detect a cup passing through the outlet and a stack running low. Fitting these interfaces into the row was part of the packaging problem.

At cabinet scale, the CAD arrangement places four rows of cup sleeves over the lower transfer area. That layout connects storage and denesting to the receiving path. The ramp appears as a separate assembly in the planning record, with its own motors and structural parts.

Move from parts planning to assembly

The Bender planning workbook identifies Ono as the client and carries a March 31, 2021 start entry and an April 19 delivery target. Its individual parts have mixed states: some drawings are released, sensor mounts have not started, and the helix has a radius change still awaiting release. The record captures several stages of development within the same assembly.

The manufacturing plan combines machined shafts and housings, purchased-component selections for motors and bearings, and proposed casting for enclosure and alignment parts. It also records alternatives, including another rotary seal and a casting quotation for the helix. These choices show how the design was being translated into parts and processes.

Photographs taken on June 4, 2021 take the record beyond CAD: gears, bearings and shafts are laid out on a bench, and a machined multi-opening enclosure is being assembled. The bearing seats, retainers and small pinions make the assembly work visible.

The roadmap decision

I carried out initial validation and began next-generation development. The reviewed material does not supply the measured test results needed to attach a cycle rate, an endurance figure or a completed qualification to that work.

The product was then removed from the roadmap because it was too complex. Clients decided to keep filling portion cups manually. The work reached cabinet-level subsystem design and initial validation, but that route to automating portion cups was not taken forward.