The Bottle Opener Challenge

Partner: Esther
Our first challenge was to design a bottle opener using SolidWorks and a laser cutter made from a single piece of Delrin plastic sheet (either 1/8", 3/16", or 1/4" thick).

We first searched the internet to find inspiration for a design. There are various types of bottle openers, some more complicated than others, so we tried to focus on the bottle openers that could be made in one single piece. We also decided to design a bottle opener with an oval- shaped opening. This type of design would be easy to replicate on a plastic sheet and it could also allow us to be creative by cutting the sheet in any way we wanted. Here are some examples:

We first started sketching some ideas and figuring out the dimensions of our bottle opener. Figuring out the oval shape was the trickiest part because we had to make sure it was not too small or too large . The width of the hole that be slightly bigger than the width of the actual bottle cap. The length of the hole was tricky because we wanted to include two ridges that would fit underneath the bottle cap. Our biggest concern was that the ridges would in fact be able to fit underneath the cap. Therefore, we had to make precise measurements and take the width of the plastic sheet into consideration. Here are some of our sketches:

After sketching and finding the dimensions, we made a model out of foam board. We placed the foam bottle opener over the cap and we saw that the two ridges would not be able to latch on to the cap. Therefore, we decided to make the opening slightly bigger and in doing so, we altered our original design by having the upper end arch out instead of arching inwards. This would give more space and allow the ridges to pull up the bottle cap properly.

Then we used SolidWorks to transfer our design into a basic outline that would be used with the laser cutter. Drawing the opening was the most challenging part of this process. Because it isn't a conventional shape, it took more time to define the whole outline and figuring out how the drawing tools worked. We had some difficulty going back to our design and altering it and figuring out why our design was over-defined. But with some help from the professors, we successfully completed the design and we were ready to test it out...