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.

Product Design a Valuable lesson #2

Anyone who thinks you are only as good as your last design project is misguided – I hear this said all the time, but the fact is, you are only as good as your next product design, because you hopefully take forward all the things you have learnt from your last.  Whilst it is important to make the lastest completed project as good as possible as this will be the most recent thing you can be judged on, I also think it is very important to be able to make mistakes and show how you have progressed. Having had quite a few product design projects in my past where the outcome, on reflection, has not been as strong as I would have liked, I now know not to be dishartened, just to analyze where to improve and come back stronger

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.

Product design A most valuable lesson

I never know when a design is right, or when it’s finished, but I have developed a good sense of when it’s wrong and I just keep going, making it less wrong each time, until it’s as less wrong as it can be.  This doesn’t mean to say that it is, or will ever be totally right.  A design can always be improved, but you have to know when to stop.  The only way I have found to do this is to go too far and then take a few steps back.  Someone once made me take a project I thought I’d finished and redo it. Then they made me redo it again.  At that point I began to hate that person, but I have to admit, that what I learnt was that the first time I hadn’t pushed the project far enough and I came up with a much cleaner (elegant) way of solving the problem the second time around.  Trying to do it for a third time taught me I couldn’t improve on the last, as adding more wouldn’t have made it perform or look any better and taking anything away would have made it perform and look less, so I knew I’d gone far enough.  This is probably the most important lesson I was given, you have to push and push to get something right and you have to go too far to realise when you’ve gone far enough.

Product Design advice - Get a bigger net

I have recently been responding to a series of questions about my design process with Maren Fiorelli,
a design student at Columbia College, Chicago.  One of my responses was the idea that at any one time at least 7 people in the world are working on or having the same ideas as you.  I have also heard said that 'Ideas are out there floating in the ether, they are not your ideas, you just have to pick them up'. 

This interests me.  I picture a field full of ideas butterflies with people with nets running around trying to catch them.  How do you maximise your chances of being able to catch as many good ideas as possible?  Get a bigger net.  If nothing is new and everything a progression, the easiest way to catch ideas is by observing something in one area and applying its function to another.  As an example, someone using a surform to shape wood wonders how it would work on a lemon and so designs a better zester.  There are hundreds of examples of this happening (how Dyson designed his bagless vacuum cleaner), so you have to look at as many different areas as possible and then store that knowledge and apply it to a current project.  Do not just rest in your comfort zone, absorb ideas, take things apart and question everything.

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 - how to make round things without a lathe

This weekend I was making the model wheels to my car.  The problem is how to make round things when you don't own a lathe.  Fortunately I have a dremel drill.  The rig I made isn't pretty, but it did the trick.  The wheels were first cut out on a bandsaw with a hole drilled in the centre, then fitted into this rig so that I could mill out the middle and shape the sides.  This one has been painted black, just to see how much finishing will be required (a lot!).  Rather than adjust the height of the cutter, I lifted the wheel up to the Dremel bit and turned the wheel by hand, which allows for much more fine tuning.  A lot of filler later and things are looking ok.

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?)....

car design - sneak peek 02

Comparing this image to an earlier post, it looks as though very little progress has been made, save a lot of grey primer, however, the whole car is 5cm wider as due to some measurement errors, I was forced to saw it in half and widen it, much of the interior is also blocked in.  It's been a challenge, but the end is in sight.

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.

Weather or not

materials

Almost fifteen years ago I was in University, playing about with materials.  For a brief period of time the rage was terracotta and aluminium.  Various designers and companies including Phillips were producing electronics concepts combining both.  The other day I found my materials folder with swatches of the things I had been interested in at the time.  They (who ever they are?) say fashion is cyclical, there's too many black or white electronic devices around at the moment, I predict a back lash.

The tank

Another one from the archive - one day i'll make this into a very cool video with a frankensteins lab vibe.

7 steps to innovation

 

It's January, but I've been having a spring clean, looking into old folders on an overloaded hard drive.  I've found some interesting bits (to me anyway) the first is something I wrote about 5 years ago for the original version of this website.  My 7 steps to innovation was inspired by 'Dieter Rams: ten principles for good design'.  I'm not sure if I totally agree with this now, but it was aimed as advice for students.  Reading it again, made me chuckle.

chair

Just before Christmas, I stayed with my Nan (the one in the kitchen video).  Social services have supplied her with a new chair that tilts to make it easier for her to do the washing up.  Whilst functionality is top priority as well as price, I still have to wonder why they make these pieces so....ugly?

design ideas - chocolate

A while ago I made a series of vac forming moulds to make my own chocolates.  They were going to be unique flavours and shapes, with popping candy in the tips of one idea.  I found the moulds whilst rummaging for some parts over christmas and it seemed relevant as recently I've eaten a lot of chocolate.  Looking at the moulds now, it's surprising how architectural they are, even though that wasn't the original intention.

 

design ideas - door stopped

I never really said why my doorstop was different, so I made a short explanation video.

design ideas - Pepper fox

I'm working on a series of designs that use animal iconography.  The pepper fox model above was a very quick exploration of form using a cheap bit of pine.  It needs a lot of refinement, but I've designed a nice grinding mechanism driven by squeezing the tail to the body that allows it to be used one handed and the ears allow you to unscrew a lid for re-filling. I'm also working on a rabbit jug and swan decanter.

the daily grind

This week I noticed my salt mill had stopped working.  On inspection of the grinder mechanism, I found the reason that it no longer ground the salt was because the grinding area had worn smooth.  There was also evidence of small plastic flakes coming off the mechanism (follow the arrow in the image).  I had no idea salt could be so abrasive and also wonder how much plastic I've been grinding/counsuming in my food?  As it happens I'm working on another pepper mill at the moment, more on that to follow...