Coaster

Understand and define

After looking at a bunch of coasters, Bella and I decided that a coaster should serve 3 main purposes:

1. Stopping water from condensing and dripping onto tables.

2. Being aesthetically pleasing.

3. Can't get in the way of drinking liquids from both mugs and cups/glasses.

It doesn't need specific parts, so long as it has a base that protects the table from moisture.

We're designing for middle-middle class and up individuals

The coaster should be

-At least somewhat stackable

-Slightly larger than the standard size of mugs and glasses (min 3 inch diameter)

-Flat both where you place the cup and on the bottom, so that it's stable.

Ideate

read: (Brainstorm)

puzzle piece

simple ceramic

Souvenir/landmark

Medieval themed.

bricky

Flat wood

lipped

Triangular, octagonal, non-circular

sci-fi

Multi-purpose

mini-shelf

Smart Coaster-Temperature, weight, music

Alexa Coaster

Alexa-Google home coaster add-on

One coaster to rule them all

Coaster with coaster stacker/container.

Character head coasters

Okay ideas:

Medieval themed

lipped

Triangular, octagonal, non-circular

sci-fi

Multi-purpose

mini-shelf

Alexa/google home coaster add-on

With coaster stacker/container

The one were going with:

Medieval themes mini-shelf with lip.

We chose this because we thought it was cool.

Test

We found that the original design had several problems.

The biggest one was that the shelf didn't fit inside the coaster, rendering that entire feature unusable. This was because we didn't give it any clearance room to fit in. It was the exact size needed to fit in on the 3D model, which meant it became too large when 3D printed. It didn't work.

Another flaw was all the irremovable scaffolding. Because of the shelf around the top (to support the laser cut coaster) there was a wall of irremovable scaffolding around the walls, wasting material.

Another thing was that it didn't feel at all medieval. There was no great walls or towers, no epic battles, not even those blocky bits you find at the top of medieval walls.

All 3 of these had fairly simple solutions:

Give the drawer some clearance space.

Redesign the method of keeping the coaster up.

Add those blocky bits.

Make

After reprinting the shelf twice (the first time it didn't fit at all, the second it was too small and loose) and the coaster once (to add the redesigned elements), we finished our coaster.

Here are some pictures:

Share

After sharing our design with peers the biggest piece of criticism we got was that there was no coaster bit, but that was just because we haven't had access to the laser cutter, and so couldn't produce the design we wanted. We pretty much just followed the design process that was provided, not that that's a bad thing. We had lots of ideas, and the process helped us to narrow it down and to refine them. The easiest stage was probably the 'Ideate' stage, since it was all just us being creative and suggesting every idea that came into our heads. The most difficult was 'Make', since it required a lot of work, and time consuming trial and error. In the end it was successful, except for that we didn't get a chance to laser cut the wooden portion. In terms of critiques on the final product, we achieved pretty much all of the objectives. The only things we would refine more if we were to continue the project would be making the shelf a bit longer (it goes a bit to far back) and making the handle easier to grab.

We worked pretty well together, playing to each others strengths in the parts of this project we each handled.

Bella made the wooden portion and its design, and I made the 3D designed and printed portion.

Bella: Although I didn't do any of the 3D modelling, I still contributed to the project a fair amount and on time through my initial sketched designs and more final designs to be laser cut for the end product (although technical difficulties stopped my part of the coaster from being completed (yet!).

Bryn: I found myself being very productive on this challenge. I overcame several obstacles in 3D designing it, and I'm proud of what i have made, and the solutions I found to many of the problems encountered in the first draft.