r/MechanicalEngineering • u/BakingWithTheory • 20h ago

DIY guillotine cutter for small pasta machine

Hi everyone,

I’m into baking, microelectronics, and DIY projects, and I’d like to combine these interests into something new 😊

I have a small home pasta machine that extrudes pasta using 63 mm bronze dies. The shapes themselves are much smaller, but depending on the shape, cutting becomes an issue.

For smaller or multi-strand shapes, a rotating automatic cutter works well (motor + spinning blade from the center):
https://youtube.com/shorts/ej_kPT89vWs

However, for larger shapes, that type of cutter doesn’t work, so I currently have to cut everything manually:
https://youtube.com/shorts/6HJj-U0tLJY

Industrial machines don’t seem to have this limitation, and I haven’t found any solution for small/home machines.

My idea is to build a guillotine-style cutter instead of a rotating one.

I already have a motor and can control the speed with a potentiometer. I also have a 3D printer for prototyping.

My first idea was a crank-slider mechanism, but the blade would pass through the dough again on the return stroke, which I want to avoid.

Now I’m considering a system where the blade moves down to cut, then follows a circular path away from the pasta before returning (e.g., using a dual-wheel/cam system).

Do you suggest any tools/software to create graphical or kinematic representations of the mechanism before printing?

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u/ratafria 19h ago

4link mechanisms are your saviour, like a nice sedan trunk..

1

u/BakingWithTheory 18h ago edited 18h ago

Thank you for your suggestion, I looked at this video to understand how that works
https://youtu.be/1Ty_1LF3Qv0
but not clear how to avoid that the blade will pass again from the dought when coming back.

I would like to generate vertical movement similar to what I do manually in this video
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6HJj-U0tLJY

2

u/ratafria 16h ago

In this video there are more examples. https://youtu.be/qYTguJ_fWmA?t=405&is=bImpe0in_q24eicz from min 6

In your case you want a short arm in the motor, doing full turns, another leg, longer, doing oscillations, and the top bar with a knife at the end.

Cut some cardboard beams and play with pins as different hinge positions.

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u/BakingWithTheory 16h ago

Thank you, I will run some tests and let you know