“Delightful” the 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.

Wiring & Soldering

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.

3D Modeling

I used Rhinoceros 5 3D NURBS modeling software to create my spoon. By using networksurface command I was able to create an organic shape out of the smooth curves that I drew in the beginning. After creating the whole shape, I cut it into two pieces, and created shells out of two solid pieces.

3D Printing

I used Dimension 3D Printer. It took approximately 3 hours to get the printed object out of the printer. Then I placed it into the chemical bath to get rid of the supporting material.