Minutes Ramens

Minutes Ramen was my team's product for our sophomore level Mechanical Engineering Design class at Virginia Tech. Our goal was to solve a problem for college students with a physical device. The problem we chose to solve was the lack of time. Lots of college students have extremely busy schedules, and cooking food takes a significant amount of time. Over the span of about two months we designed and built the Minutes Ramen, which automatically makes ramen noodles in about 5 minutes. The user must fill the top portion with water, insert the ramen noodle block and seasoning in a specially fit bowl into the bottom, push the start button, then walk away! A single Arduino board controls all systems and starts by heating up the water to a boil. Then a valve is opened, and the water is dispensed into the bowl. The ramen is left to soak in the hot water for about two minutes, then the heated stirring mechanism is lowered by our specially designed winch (pictured below). After stirring for another two minutes, a green light illuminates, and the ramen is ready to eat! Below are some pictures of our development process.