The Bar Monkey In Action
Categories: Cooking, Entertainment, Food, Technology
After months of planning and weeks of construction, on New Years Eve, 2005 Alan’s Bar Monkey finally made its debut.
I have updated the Bar Monkey image gallery with more photos from the construction, testing and first night of use.
The first night was a limited success. The Bar Monkey made tasty drinks, and calibration was easy, but due to gas leaks in the caps we ran out of gas after only two rounds of drinks.
So we’re currently experimenting with different methods of making caps. The original design used hot glue, but leakage has been a problem. Alan attempted to seal these leaks with silicone sealer but this didn’t help much.
The most recent attempt was made with 30-minute epoxy. Most of us held that this had a better chance than other methods we have tried, but actually failed completely. It seems that polyethylene (which the tubing is made from) is extraordinarily difficult to glue.
So we’re back to the drawing board for caps, but check out the image gallery for pics of the unit in action. There will be more to come.
As time allows I will be posting more info on the construction process and some better pics of the finished unit. Also check out my other stories on the planning process and the relay assembly.
4 Responses to “The Bar Monkey In Action”
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Carla Says:
January 8th, 2006 at 3:43 pmHave you considered something like Gorilla Glue? Sounds like you need an adhesive which expands as it dries and dries hard.
-C, perhaps a little to big of a fan of gorilla glue…
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Jon Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 10:35 amBryan said:
Hello.
1st off love your site. But any ways… I was looking at the posts
about Alan’s bar monkey and i wanted to know if you could give me his
contact info. I tried his website but it seems like it is down. The
reason I want to contact him is because i am in the process of
building my self a bar monkey and need some help. I wanted to know if
he would distribute his software. Source or complied. I have tried
barmonkey.net but nobody there is helping me.Thanks,
BryanI replied:
Bryan, glad you like the site. I have forwarded your info on to Alan and asked him to contact you about what he would be willing to share. I am also long overdue on posting more information on the bar monkey. I guess it’s about time.We certainly learned a lot working on this project. Especially about gluing polyethylene tubing for caps (we went through at least 5 revisions before we got to one that works.) We also found barmonkey.net fairly sparse for info and wound up searching everywhere else, and still improvising a lot.
Good luck, and don’t hesitate to email me if you have any specific questions. I’ll try to get more info up about our process soon.
Jon
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Dave Stafford Says:
April 11th, 2006 at 9:37 pmI love it! Great job making it look elegant too!
I want to help if you have not worked out your bottle cap seal yet, I have a suggestion:
If you have the space drill the holes just a little bigger in the cap, here’s why:
Use a thin wall softer rubber tubing (not hard plastic tubing) just inside the new larger hole. I’m thinking maybe 1.5″ long of this soft tube. Have just a little stick out the top and most of it inside. Then, Jam your hard plastic tubing in from the bottom (to reach the bottom of the bottle) and use a plastic hose connector jammed in from the top side to force a seal.
OR jam the hard plastic all the way through and make the soft rubber act as a gromet. There’s an idea just buy a rubber gromet. THey may even have a dual port gromet.
Good luck, and keep sweating for great entertainment value!
Dave -
Jon Says:
April 11th, 2006 at 9:46 pmDave,
Thanks for the ideas. I had thought about gromets but we found another solution before we tried this. Check out my latest article on the bar monkey for the details and more pics. Glad you like it!
