A Piece of Home Bottle Opener
Collaborative Winter Market Project
3 Months
This project focused on sustainability. We addressed this by reusing old street signs from around campus and repurposing them into an easy to carry bottle opener. This design is easy to mass produce and the material is lightweight. Our target audience was college aged students at The Ohio State University.
Collaboration with Lauren Goslee
Concept Statement
Each year The Ohio State University Industrial Design students create a project that focuses on sustainability. Because we are based in a college town where cans are often discarded, I explored using aluminum as a material. Aluminum is one of the easiest materials to recycle for reuse purposes. It does not lose any of its durability in the recycle process and can be manipulated to be very strong. At the beginning of the ideation process I focused on the discarded cans but eventually found them to be too weak to use as a primary material.
Sketching
Exploration of Materials
In order to find a stronger form of aluminum we explored the material properties of aluminum street signs. Street signs are very difficult to recycle and often end up in the landfill. Working with Ohio State University, we began our prototyping process to discover if these signs would provide the strength needed to produce a high quality product.
Prototyping
I used the laser cutter to test out a variety of shapes. I focused on size and durability in my iterations.
The inspiration behind the final shape was based on road sign graphics.
Later in our testing process when we decided upon the most effective shape, we were able to begin cutting our road signs on the CNC machine.
Final Concept
Link to our Website: https://uas.osu.edu/third-annual-industrial-design-winter-market
