A Machine Spends Four Minutes Splitting, Cutting and Sanding One Pair of Disposable Chopsticks

Kazuya Shibata's Fully Automatic Disposable Chopstick Splitter 2 is designed to split disposable wooden chopsticks cleanly and evenly. It feeds the chopsticks in, centers and pulls the two halves apart, then uses a circular saw to cut the remaining joint and a belt sander to smooth the ends.

The machine includes suspension to accommodate thickness variations and a self-centering gripping mechanism. Shibata spent about a year developing it, while processing one pair of chopsticks takes roughly four minutes. A task normally finished by hand in a moment has grown into a complete miniature production line.