pond filter continued

We are officially in summer and with the warm weather, the perennial problem of pond filtration has once again come to the fore.  Last year I posted a piece on my blog about a prototype I was working on to clear the pea soup pond in my garden to a gin clear beauty.  Following what I learn't last year, I have once again been working on a prototype to solve the problem, so far with limited results.   As I have said before, good things take time, but I wish everything would happen faster.  I guess the older you get the less patience you have and when it comes to having a clear pond my patience is waining but I'm not giving up yet.  More to follow.

Camera stabilizer

I've been working on new camera stabilizer, having watched Youtube videos of many DIY versions, I have made my own version of a gimbal (to understand the problem and what many think is the best solution and because it's important to walk a mile in another mans shoes) but I have an idea for a different version, so I've been back to the Lego box to create a quick prototype.  May times people have read my blog and thought it to be quite engineering based, but unless you are taking something that already exists and making it look different, this is how all product design begins.  You have to try things and keep experimenting, playing with ideas until something new suggests itself and in this instance, I find the best way to quickly prototype is with Lego. More to follow.

sneak peek - wheel barrow

It's almost finished, except for a few more images and a short video to edit and upload.

dishwasher trolley

Recently I have been having thoughts about making dishwashers easier to empty - not that dishwashers are hard to empty, but the problem, if you are old, is that you cannot carry as much and so, if the dishwasher is full, to unload it you have to make several trips.  Then of course the problem is that if you are old, you do not want to make several trips.  Why not make a small dishwasher with the baskets on a trolley, so that you can wheel all the items around your kitchen to unload them. 

fence panels

The weather in the Uk has been terrible of late with strong winds causing a lot of damage.  A lot of UK properties are fenced with wooden panel fencing for privacy.  This is a problem with the current gusts of wind, as even the strongest fence posts and panels are being severely tested.  

So I've been thinking about solutions for fence designs that keep privacy, but in strong gusts, can adapt to let air through.  The first idea was too similar to a hit and miss panel already in existence.  Idea number 2 has panels mounted on pivots, so in strong gusts they will lift up, but this would require metal work, which would be a more expensive solution.  Idea number 3 is a normal slatted fence with holes drilled in the panels and strips of poly propylene or other suitable plastic covering the holes like cat flaps. When strong winds blow, they will lift allowing air to pass through, but when the wind speed is low, the flaps will remain down. The strips could be offered in a variety of colours and would hopefully be a lowcost and interesting aesthetic solution to an increasing problem. With development, the slats could be replaced with wooden bars to which the strips are attached, allowing even more air movement and cutting down on manufacturing times. 

Bike Lock

A while ago I had a request to design a bike lock, which I have been musing about for a while and now I've reached a point where I'm willing to admit defeat.  It's not that I can't design a good bike lock, but what I can't really do is improve upon existing designs.  So, I started thinking about making the bike become the lock, something that I also think has been done, by turning the frame into a carribena.  But again, maybe I'm asking the wrong question.  All too often people approach designers and ask them to design them an object, not a solution to a problem.  It should not be about designing another bike lock or anything else that already exists, but addressing a problem, which in this instance is stopping a bike from being stolen. Maybe the idea would be to design a bike so light and foldable or compact, that you wouldn't need to lock it up.  You could just carry it into the office and store in under the desk, or put it in your bag and carry it in to the classroom.  Can it currently be done in a staisfactory way? Who knows, but asking different questions and addressing problems, not redesigning current solutions, is the best way to innovate and come up with something (hopefully) better - time to start musing again. 

Summer is just around the corner - cool trousers

With the terrible weather we're experiencing in the UK at the moment, you may feel that this post is a little too early, but summer will be here before we know it and that means unbearable trouser clinging to your thighs heat in the office where I work.  For the purposes of professional appearance, I have to wear trousers, shorts are not allowed and wow do things get uncomfortable.  So I've been thinking of ways to maintain appearances, but keep things a little cooler in the leg line.  Is it possible to install laptop cooling fans that can be sewn into trouser legs or pockets to allow the movement of air, or tubing woven through the legs that carrys coolant?  Its time to start thinking about this now, before the heat arrives!

Product Design, equals watch project is finished

I have finished the last piece of work I will do on the series of watch concepts I've been working on.  It's been an interesting project, I could go on, but I feel I have pushed the project far enough.  Using my check list, I've taken the materials I have as far as I currently can although with the aesthetics, I could go on forever.  The innovative closing mechanism still needs tweaks, but I think I have proven it can work.  The last prototype was made in wood with plastic and metal work and sprayed with car body paint.  To watch (ha ha) the whole story, please go here. 

This week Samsung released their first smart watch, the Galaxy Gear.  I still think watch screens are too small for surfing the internet and reading emails.  It even has a camera and can be used as a phone. I think it's trying to do too much, but what do I know.  These days everything is decided by sales figures, so we shall wait and see.

One thing I have though about with smart watches is if they would be to help people with alzhimers. Could family members set a calendar that is displayed on the watch to help remind sufferers about comon tasks they need to do? 

Can product designers really change the world

Can designers really change the world?  Most of the time all we are doing is churning out the same old stuff with a different face on it (see my post about how many chairs there are, yet everyday there's a release about yet another one, 4 legs a seat and a back, it's slightly different from the last, but not by much).  So, I have been concerned with what actual value (not profit) I can add to my designs, how can designers really change the world? Or at least do their little bit whilst the scientists and engineers sweat the important stuff.

The problem is, it's very difficult to ascertain if what you're designing is good or not. Look at wind farms, they have to be better for the environment than burning fossil fuels, but how much better? They apparently kill quite a lot of birds each year.  They cost a lot in materials to manufacture and they are currently not that efficient.  On face value it all seems good, but delve in a bit and it gets murkier.

Recently we have been experiencing a heat wave in the UK and my car doesn't have any air con, by the end of a short drive, I have had to peel myself out of the seat.  So, a while ago I saw a post about making food coolers for poverty stricken areas in Africa.  Food is placed in a metal box, surrounded by wadding, (wool, or another absorbent material) held in place with wire mesh.  The wool is soaked in water and as the water evaporates in the hot sun, warmth is drawn out of the metal box, cooling the food inside.  The same thing happens when we get out of a swimming pool on holiday and feel cold as the water evaporates off our skin.  I know that it takes a lot of petrol to work air con, so air con is not environmentally friendly.  What if this low tech box cooler idea could be built into a car roof, so when it's hot, water from a bottle could be spread over the roof and as it evaporates it cools down the interior.  Is this environmentally better than air con and if so, by how much?  Does the amount of extra water carried and used on the roof, the extra material etc negate the savings on petrol?  

The problem is as far as I know there's no where to obtain the data.  What designers need is a really clever cost calculator app.  Our connectivity is now sophisticated enough to get real time updates on anything.  Why not an app that reads a CAD file, you state the products purpose and it recommends materials.  The best for friction, UV stability, hygiene, ease of reuse or recycling, longevity of the material, energy to process the material, energy to recycle the material etc.  Then based on your location, it recommends manufacturers.  If you have a supplier overseas, you input manufacturing source and distance to warehouse or shop, then the computer would generate a wealth of data, how many you can fit in a shipping container, or van and (based on weight) how much fuel it will consume on its journey from manufacturer to store, the best route, how many hills that involves, average time idling at traffic lights, material cost of product based on continually updating live market prices etc.    

This could shift the way things are designed.  Designers could tweak their designs and based on live data, get more accurate feedback on how a tweak here and there would really improve their design, to actually change the world!  At the moment the crux when designing is that you start out with the best intentions, but you really don't have a true picture of whether or not you are really doing any good and quite often the best intentions are misguided.   

is product design dead?

Surf Board shaper Neil Randall (if6was9) at work

Recently I keep stumbling upon debate about the death of product design, not in terms of definition, a change of name or description, but in terms of people,  it is claimed that product designers will be replaced by computers and machines.  This is not a new debate, but it has got me thinking.  If a computer can generate randomly or selectively, a thousand different skins for a product in a matter of seconds, what need for a designer?  I always took comfort in the slim hope that computers would not be able to understand or incorporate into the design the human aspect we currently take for granted.  For example, I recently watched a program about women designing products for women, with greater understanding than any male could bring to the table.  Could a computer grasp the subtlety that potentially a male designer may not?  Yes a computer could generate aesthetically pleasing exteriors to products, but will it ever be able to link in the human centred design elements that demonstrate the deeper, intangible aspects that humans intuitively bring to their designs.  

A few years ago I visited an old University amigo who was shaping surf boards in Australia.  I spent a few days in his work shop and had a go at shaping a mini board.  Whilst I was able to replicate the shape of a surfboard what i didn't understand was why, because I wasn't a surfer.  He was an excellent surfer and would feel the board and know what an extra millimetre off the thickness would do to the handling, how altering the curve would subtly affect the way the board carves through the water allowing him to tailor the board to an individual or making each board subtly unique.  Having hardly ever surfed, these are things I could not appreciate and thats the thing, products are designed by humans to be used by humans.  

A computer will be able to do subtle things to shapes that I can only imagine, but will it understand the humanity of the reasons why?  Probably not, but I don't think it will need to?  Due to advances in scanners etc in the future a human could walk into a booth (or through an airport) and within seconds the machine would know everything it would need to about that person, their grip strength, how much arthritis they have in their hands, underlying medical problems, their balance etc, then it could print products specifically tailored to their needs and they'd be ready for them to collect on the way home.  It could also monitor sales to work out which objects are aesthetically pleasing to each geographic area, age, sex etc, so that it can produce designs that will have a much higher chance of appealing.  A few years of statistical data build up and advancement in this area and it will probably have us all figured out. Maybe if/when this happens, product design as we know it will be dead, but by that time, based on the teachings of many science fiction films (Terminator, Matrix, I-robot etc) the death of product design and industrial design, will be the least of our problems!

product design ideas - pond filter

I have a small pond that is currently the colour of pea soup and i'd like it to be clear.  I have a UV Light on the pump outlet, but it doesn't seem to be reducing the green (yes I've checked the bulb).  So, this weekend, I decided to go all Heath Robinson on it.  I have a load of stainless steel mesh, left over from other projects (originally my kettle design).  I've used it before to filter bits out of wine, so I thought I'd make a set up to try and take some of the sediment out of the water.  The rig I built works really well for a while, tiny bits ofsediment build up as they hit the mesh and are pushed to the sides by the pressure of the water, but aftter about an hour or so, the build up gets too great and rather than go through the mesh, the water spills over the sides.  So, I've been thinking of improving the design to incorporate a water wheel, driven by the fall of the water to brush the sediment that builds up into a collection area.  This is only the first stage, this is the product design process in action.  I have identified the problem, almost have a working solution, but it still needs the design process to make it into a realistic object.

Model making is not really a hobby, more a way of life. I'm always looking for materials to store for future models.  I have boxes and boxes of plastic parts and scraps of material, it becomes habitual to look at everything I am about to put in the bin, just to check if I can't think of what it could be useful for.  So recently I have become very interested (possibly slightly obsessed) with the packaging that comes with raw meat.  The plastic boxes that hold your chicken thighs and wings are full of amazing patterns, useful for all sorts of model details, handgrips, watch straps or if you have kids, making superhero body armour.  The possibilities are endless, (I wish I had found this when I was working on the head lamps for my car) just make sure you wash it thoroughly before re-use!

old skool Design ideas - lamp

When I was in University, during a very short project I designed and made a prototype for a fold up table top lamp body that gripped a bulb and socket.  The design was one piece, made from polypropylene and whilst it looked (in my opinion) quite cool, it was actually fairly unstable and due to the materials and shape, too light weight to be safe.  The reason for posting it here is because it's been sat in a cupboard for about 15 years, but now I need to recycle the materials for another design project I'm currently working on, a series of watches, so just before it is gone forever, sacrificed for the greater model making good, I decided to record it for posterity.

design ideas - Coffee plunger

I have friends who can't seem to plunge coffee without jetting it all over the table.  They get too impatient and push down too hard - ahem.  Whilst this may be a comment on a society that is in too much of a rush to even wait for good home made coffee. It got me thinking about improvements (probably gimmicks) that manufacturers could make to their designs, to offer a USP.  There are many ways to slowly depress the plunger, including motors and wind up mechanisms, but in the end I settled for a weight that could be placed on top of the plunger once the coffee had brewed for the required amount of time, so that our friend gravity could be left to do the job.  The coffee will no longer jet, but in regards to the manufacturers, it probably won't fly either.

design ideas - Pan lid

Loading the dishwasher after a recent meal, I was struck by how much space a frying pan lid takes up in the dishwasher.  The problem is the handle, which annoyingly always seems to be in the way.  In the past I have designed pan lids to lock to the pan, so that the pan can be drained with one hand.  Following recent experiences, I think a far more useful feature would be to have all pan lid handles fold, twist, lock or generally get totally out of the way for ease of storage and dish washer loading, so have sketched out a few concepts.

Design Ideas - clamp

Recently I have been struggling to glue awkwardly shaped objects together using the clamps that I have.  It struck me that it would be very useful to have clamps with various clamping faces that could be rotated to best select the size and shape of the grip for the job in hand.  I haven't seen anything like this available in the DIY store.

design ideas - don't dredge...Sledge!

Last year I had an idea for modifying trawl doors so that they fished just above the sea bed, reducing destruction to the sea floor, so I made this short video:

Then recently I watched the fantastic Hugh's Fish Fight.  One thing the documentary focuses on is how scallop dredging is destroying habitat and sea life (see video on the fish fight website).  The best way to catch scallops is to hand dive for them, so being a designer and having also recently seen programmes about advances to artificial limbs and computer controlled drones, I started to put things together and came up with the idea of drones with artificial limbs being piloted by computer whiz kids either from the boat or from the shore to harvest scallops.

Is this the future?

But also (thinking around the problem) very few areas are currently zoned off for hand diving only, so better commercial solutions need to be sought for areas where dredging is still allowed.  One piece of behaviour I have seen, is that when the scallop is touched, it's response is to try and flee by propelling itself away:

I wonder if this behaviour can be exploited so by slowly pulling a sledge over a bed of scallops, with dangling ropes at the front of the sledge, they can be tickled/nudged into fleeing and then be collected in the back of the sledge?  This would greatly reduce the damage caused by dredging.

model making - Bandsaw blues

I have found that whilst making prototypes and testing concepts in my workshop (shed) in certain light conditions with a thin saw blade, it becomes really difficult to see my bandsaw blade accurately.  So in fear of loosing the odd finger I recently, as a simple and very cheap fix, taped a piece of paper to the guard.  I'm also contemplating spraying the circular cover white.  I'm surprized manufacturers don't supply a white version when you buy the saw?  This simple solution appears to do the trick for now.

design ideas - newt rescue

image: a newt from my own pond

One of my mates (Andy) works in wildlife conservation, tracking UK populations of amphibians.  On reading my blog post about drains during the flooding, he told me that a big problem our amphibians suffer when migrating to ponds along roads, is falling into drains - they cannot escape and eventually perish.  I came up with some quick ideas to solve this problem that are retrofittable, can be made cheaply and either installed just for the migration seasons or left in place year round.  Concepts focus on either stopping amphibians falling into drains in the first place or providing them with a means of escape when they do (No.5 isn't serious, but if copper dissuades slugs from veg patches will it work on frogs?)....

design hack

I don't know if it's because of the bitterly cold weather we've been having (see previous post), but my bandsaw blades keep breaking.  Rather than throw them out, I decided to recycle broken blades into wood rasps. I initially wanted to fix cut lenghths together with nuts and bolts, but the tempered blades whilst easy to saw, proved impossible to drill through.  Instead I taped all the pieces together and cut a 'V' in each end (with a dremel and grinding wheel) to then hold in a frame.

I also positioned the teeth in opposite directions so I cut material when working the rasp in both directions.  The blades are spaced apart because the teeth of the blades are angled, so with coarse toothed blades, this gives a better cut, but with fine toothed blades this isn't necessary as my second experiment proved.  I am very pleased with the results, they work as well as my current wood working rasp and save me throwing the blades away.

As fine toothed blades don't need to be spaced apart, the ends can just as easily be wrapped in strong tape and then covered with filler or Sugru to make them comfortable to hold.