Cotton Candy Machine

Overview

A cotton candy machine turns ordinary sugar into a cloud of fine threads by melting it and flinging it through tiny holes. At the centre is the Floss Head: sugar poured into its spinner cup is melted by a heated ribbon, then thrown outward by rotation through a perforated band where it cools in mid-air into floss. The Drive Motor spins that head fast, the surrounding Catch Bowl gathers the threads, the Control Board switches motor and heater, and everything sits on a weighted Base that resists the spinning mass.

How it works

Spun sugar exploits the fact that sugar will form glassy strands if it is melted and stretched fast enough to skip recrystallising. Inside the Floss Head, a nichrome Heating Element ribbon wraps the Spinner Cup and brings the sugar to a thin syrup. The head is turning at a few thousand rpm, so centrifugal force drives that syrup outward through the fine holes of the Floss Screen; each hole draws the melt into a thread that solidifies almost instantly in the cooler air and flies outward to the Catch Bowl, where the operator winds it onto a cone or stick.

Because the head spins continuously while carrying a live heater, power cannot reach it through fixed wires. The Slip Ring & Brushes solves this: carbon brushes bear on rotating rings to feed current onto the spinning ribbon. The Drive Motor is a universal motor running on Ball Bearing supports, fed through its own Motor Brushes. The Control Board keeps motor and heat on separate paths through the Brew Buttons, so the head can be brought up to speed before the sugar is heated, which spreads the first melt evenly rather than letting it pool on one side. The weighted Base and its Suction Foot suction cups hold the machine steady against the off-balance forces of the spinning head.