— PROJECT NAME
Steel Two Top Bottle
— ROLE
Mechanical Engineer
— DATE
Spring 2017
The Two Top bottle was intended to be a functional upgrade on a fashionable item. Our design research indicated that people loved drinking from small openings, but hated not being able to put ice cubes in it.
The ID team created the design direction and surfacing, and I created the tooling CAD from those surfaces using top down modeling. Cost was a huge issue on this project because we were effectively making two water bottles and pricing it to compete with single water bottles. I analyzed the manufacturing processes and negotiated with the Contract Manufacturer to shave cents from the piece price.
DESIGN CHALLENGES
Designing two leak proof seals.
Maintaining competitive insulation performance.
Paint Color and logo selection.
DFM
GASKET
The middle gasket design was one of the most challenging aspects of this product because it needed to repeatedly deform on a surface profile that was difficult to control in manufacturing, and stay connected to the upper bottle section.
CAP
I strive to realize the pure product vision created by industrial designers. To make the cap manufacturable and maintain the aesthetic design I split the plastic into two parts and overmolded the yellow part onto the blue SPI threads.
Materials: 304 SS, PP, Silicone
Processes: Stamping, Swaging, Compression Molding, Injection Molding, Overmolding, Laser Welding