The Puzzle of the Bottle Opener (2 of 2)

Albert Einstein once said,

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."*

With that in mind, since Sam and my first two designs didn't work, there was no point in simply editing iteration two 'slightly'. We sat down and did a massive redesign and this time we included the aesthetic aspects from the very beginning.

We started by asking what would make our bottle opener exceptionally intuitive and decided to make the design fit the purpose. Our third iteration would visually portray what it would do.

We wanted our final design to actually look like a bottle with the lid popping off.

Over the course of the rest of the week, Sam and I took careful measurements to insure that our bottle opener would work properly. We made the two prongs approximately 1.3 cm apart in length and .9 cm apart in height, so they would not get in the way of each other and would be able to comfortably fit over the lid. We kept the handle a solid six inches long so as to give our product the maximum torque possible. In addition, we made the lower prong much thicker and designed the point upwards to ensure it would not continuously break off. All the physics fro our previous designs was still applicable, but this time we wanted a cantilever with better grip.

Once we were happy with our design, we built it in Solidworks using the initial base from our previous models.

After we inserted extruded bosses into the existing cuts, we made new cuts and incisions to our model until we had a design that was to our liking.








We added design elements that made our product visually appealing, including cuts to look like the flutes on a bottle neck, an angled cap cut-out and the Coca-Cola logo (which had to be traced into the design by hand). We made sure that the decorative cuts, such as the bottle flutes, logo and cap, were placed so that they would not interfere with the overall integrity of the piece.

Once we had our design fir to cut, we made our third iteration. The initial cut did not go well, as the Coca-Cola logo proved to hard for the laser to cut without melting the surrounding plastic in the process. As a result, we were forced to engrave the logo instead. The second time went extremely well, and although we actually got a model slightly scaled down from our digital design (this must have happened somewhere between the computer and laser cutter) overall, we were very happy with the results.

Now that we had the final product in our hands, all that was left to do was to test it...

It worked perfectly!

The two prongs grip the lower lip and top of the cap extremely well, with a lot less sliding than the first two models. This is probably because the curved design of the handle allows for a better grip and the palm and fingers can naturally find comfortable places on it. Additionally, the flutes through the handle help increase the friction between the hand and bottle opener. Though it took several tries, we eventually made a design that covered all the aspects we needed it to cover. 

Except for a few minor details, Sam and I were very happy with our results. The bottle opener looked nice, was easy to use and performed its task without fail time and time again. If we had more time, we probably would have altered the logo's scale to see if the laser could actually cut it out properly, but Sam found a creative way to make it stand out using a red expo marker...

She colored over the logo with the marker and then wiped it away. Any dye that bled into the engraving stayed behind. Beyond this, the only other thing I would like to have changed was the scaling problem. We had encountered size problems before with our first iteration, and because the final product is a little smaller than than what we specified, the problem must have occurred in Solidworks. However, since we'll both get more practice with Solidworks as the semester continues, I'm sure we'll be able to fix this and prevent it from happening in future projects. 

For the moment though, I never knew how much better soda could taste when the bottle is opened with your own handmade bottle opener. Cheers!

*http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins133991.html