Bottle Opener

How to build a bottle opener from .16 in plastic?

I really had no idea! So much for creativity and all. I guess it's a good thing I don't plan on being an engineer as I lack severley this whole creativity thing. Oh well, this will still be an AWESOME class.

Since I lack creativity and original ideas, I decided to search the internet for the clever ideas from other people! Luckily my lab mates were clever and had good ideas. Also the internet provided wonderful pictures and inspiration such as this:

Which even if we can't recreate is a really awesome bottle opener!

We would also like to extend our thanks to this website Pretty mp3 players for their wonderful inspiration. We have decided as a group that failing engineering or geology we can all become industrial designers for apple!

Side note -- really the ipad? What a poor naming choice!

Back to work --- so we looked at the different designs online. And most bottle openers fall into two categories. The first is like the one pictured above that is on a horizontal plane with a hole that is about as wide as the bottle top and less long than the length of the bottle top. The other type of bottle opener would be this kind: 
Bottle Opener
So after we decided that making the bottle opener that had only one horizontal layer would be the easiest option with the materials at hand. We started planning our bottle opener. You can see from the posts that my drawing skills leave a lot to be desired. 
 We had a fun series of drawings. Once we settled on the basic idea. We decided to draw it to scale. We used the digital caligrapher for this. It was really helpful. We then cut out a representation of the bottle opener to scale from foam board. It came out well. So then we went into solid works and started making it. We had some trouble with solid works. Luckily our NINJA was able to help us (though he didn't know why solid works was acting up either!).

The class ended with us ready to build the design using solid works and print it out. So I had to miss Friday's class because of an interview at Duke for graduate school (way coool and wayyyyy exhausting!). But my two partners (Awesome Peeps) Krista and Vic built the bottle opener using the laser printer. They even made a movie of it working. But I can't post that movie, so email me if you want it!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hopper Last

Image
So we made Hopper hop....well sorta! We built a bottom for hopper's body by adding 6 puzzle pieces! Lots of fun making puzzle pieces that fit together in a tight fit. Then we have a small tail piece of foam that helps with the balance and the hop of hopper. We got in the long axel and put it in for the double axle of the engine. Unfortunately we picked up the extra long one which messed up our balance and looked REALLY strange. So instead we decided to use the shorter 100 mm axle (not the 150). But at this point our engine started acting up! So after an hour and a half of fiddling with the engine, we got it to stop making weird noises when it ran. We also decided to do some soddering. We soddered the batteries with the engine and added an on/off switch. Lot's of fun soddering again. After all of this our hopper is mostly working. I've shown you tons of pictures so here are the two new ones from friday: This is hopper with the 150 mm axle -- doesn't it look weird! yo...
Read more

Thermal Work - Matlab -- Write up

So I worked with Jeff on the matlab thermal work, since I had missed a fair amount during thesis time. WE managed to finish up everything. Umm ok here goes: So I worked up the part 1 of the thermal challenge in class with Robbie. The cooling and heating of coffee was really easy. But hey, I've done tons and TONS of matlab coding this semester (aka > 200 pages of matlab codes). Any who, what happens with bang bang is lots of oscillation for the control, aka the temperature of the coffee oscillates around the desired temperature. When you code in proportional control, you have trouble reaching the desired temperature. Instead the coffee tends to be right below the desired temperature and never quite reaches the desired temp. I guess Starbucks can't use proportional control then! It is quite fun to add in a time delay for the proportional control and bang-bang control. With bang-bang you see a fair amount of overshoot. You see some overshoot with proportional control too. a...
Read more

Hopper Finale

Image
He works! It's crazy soooo crazy :). Here are some pictures from hopper finale. We did all of the sodering and used the smaller 100 cm axle. We also got the alignment correct between the two legs. And he hops!!!! There is a movie I have, so please email me if you want to see it :). I don't know how to post it here so yea. We decided not to redo any parts as he works pretty solidly! There was one idea to make the big rabbit legs a tad bit smaller so that they rotate completely freely without touching the floor surface when he is hopping, but the weighting of the legs with screws really means that this isn't an issue! I think hopper is adorable and my partner is brilliant. I am good with solidworks and printing but she is good with lots of everything else!
Read more