Semi-automatic honey sticks/straw filling machine

[Honey Stix Fix]

Hello bee keeper community,

my name is Max and I am part of a Senior Design Project team in Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, Indiana.
Our project goal is to design a semi-automated machine for filling honey straws.
From our first research we found out, that a lot of bee keepers are in need of low budget, below $1000, straw filling machine. But it seems that there is no small scale machine currently on the market to make this process easier.

If you are a honey producer or honey distributor and are interested or you know someone who could be interested, please help us to create a customer profile. We want our design to totally match with the expectations of the poeple, that would eventually use the machine.

Important points would be:

- wished production rate per hour/day/week
- batch size
- grade of automation, manual control
- power source: manually, electric....
- size/dimension limits
- price range: per machine, per produced honey stick.

If I forgot something or you have any idea, please feel free to add!

Thank you all in advance! I am looking forward to a great project.