3D Printed Candy Dispenser

So back in March I decided I wanted to make my dad something for his birthday which is in April. After thinking about it for a while I decided to make him a 3D printed candy dispenser for Skittles since that is one of his favorite candies. He also like Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad so I decided to model this candy dispenser after the water tank in Chama, New Mexico. It is a pretty cool water tank as it has 2 spouts. I used some photos he had taken over the years to model it off of. The picture below is one of the pictures he took that I was using as a reference. It can be found on his website (http://www.davesriogrande.net/Structures/WaterTanks/chamawt.htm).

I figured it wouldn't be too hard to figure out but it definitely would take time to design. I decided to make both of the spouts move up and down. One would be for pouring out the candy and the other was just for decoration. The candy would be dispensed from a rotating dish inside of a funnel. This would turn based upon a handle on the outside of the tank.

By his birthday I had most of the dispenser components and the main part of the tank modeled in Solidworks. I still had a few things to do that but I presented my designs that I did have for his birthday and he gave me a few pointers on the scale from some drawings he had of a similar tank and some more reference pictures at different angles. About a month later when I was finished with my master's degree I was able to finish the designs to be printed. A couple of the Solidworks assembly views are below.

I was able to print the parts with PLA between June and August. We had the AC go out in our garage for about 6 weeks so I wasn't spending any time out there to 3D print because it was way too hot out there. After they were printed, I sanded everything, painted it with acrylic paint and then coated key components of it in Alumilite's Amazing Clear Cast resin to make it food safe. This last step took weeks because of how long the resin took to cure and how I could only work in the morning so I could have lower temperatures and a longer working time. After all the resin was cured, I glued the dish assembly together and let it dry over night.

Today I was able to wash it and gave it to him full of Skittles!