This page shows the most painful, excruciating part of the project: the candy conveyor belt. I wanted part of the machine to show the "assembled" candy being pumped out on a belt, a la the classic episode of "I Love Lucy". Countless hours were spent trying to build this detail and make it work. If I had to do this over again, I'm not sure how it could be pulled off without throwing money at it or finding a pre-built setup at a mechanical surplus store, so in the end maybe it was as good as it could be. But the headache required to do it was substantial.
First I had to find something for a belt: I came across some screen material at Home Depot that I think is used for raingutters. This seemed to be a good size. But then what to use for the rollers? I found some PVC fittings that seemed like they might work. But they were too narrow, so the plan was to glue them together in pairs to get the needed width.
OK, now I have rollers, but how to attach them to the machine? Solution: make some wheels. I wound up cutting wheels out of wood (twice) and machining them down so they could fit the PVC and hold a drive belt to turn them. But where do I find a drive belt of the right length? Solution: make one. I had some rubber screen door liner and cut it to the right length. Then after numerous prototypes with copper wire and hot glue arrived at a workable, if not pretty, drive belt.
Once I had all the pieces completed, I attached them to the back of the machine along with a motor and let it go. The conveyor belt sagged, and required placing a wooden "shelf" between the rollers to support the belt. Then the conveyor belt continually ran off the rollers, and required much trial and error positioning of mini roller wheels to keep the belt on the main rollers. I added some "ribs" to the rollers (lines of hot glue) to give them some grip. It didn't help matters that the screen from which the conveyor belt was made was uneven at the edges. Did I mention that many hours were spent on this detail?
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OK, now that I had a working conveyor belt, I needed to "build" the candy. I bought a bunch of Halloween candy, painstakingly removed the candy from the packages (so I wouldn't have to worry about rotting) and then filled/resealed the packages with a combination of mat board, foam and hot glue to give them their original bulk. I picked up some small plastic pumpkins and created little "piles" of candy by hot-gluing the candy packages to rectangles of heavy black paper. These rectangles were then twist-tied onto the screen material of the conveyor belt. This worked well as the candy piles could stay attached to the conveyor belt while running around the rollers in an infinite loop.
Did I mention that many hours were spent on this detail?
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