Coffee-Fondue-Popcorn Maker

I was inspired by some of the great posts i saw on instructables and decided to make my own personal popcorn maker. A few years ago, i had come across a great coffee warmer at a cafe. I thought the basic set up for both is the same, so why the hell not make a combo! The fondue extension is just for my love of dark chocolate...

As you can see, its just as simple as making a stand with a candle holder with variable height. 
I tried a lot of ideas to make a simple variable height mechanism and eventually finalised a simple cam mechanism. 

I decided to use PCBs for the stand because a> i had a lot of them (my ex boss let me take all the scrap pcbs we had stored in the office) b> They look extremely good when a candle is glowing behind them. c> it is very easy to work with them if you have a rotary dremel tool. 

For the mug holder, i used cycle spokes and acrylic for the cam.

I arranged the PCBs in a hexagon. Linked the holes with small rings made from tin wire. Used Araldite(resin + hardener based adhesive) to keep the whole structure rigid. 

Just 3 cycle spokes did the trick

I tried a lot of ideas to change the height of the candle. Finally a simple cam arragement worked...



Here are some of the failed prototypes:

Coffee warmer

 



Pop Corn Maker




Fondue maker