Welcome back! 👀
This blog will be the final blog entry which will capture everything related to my product from start(preliminary ideation process) to the end(prototyping)
A quick recap:
After some discussion and brainstorming, my team and I decided to work one a problem that revolves around applying hair care products. This is because it is something that happens daily for every single individual and that sometimes it can get pretty messy or the hair care product is not applied deep enough to function effectively. Our product will be able to deal with a range of different hairstyles.
During the ideation process, we learned what SCAMPER is and how we can create our product based on multiple perspectives, as well as the feasibility analysis, which forces us to think whether our product idea is feasible.
Next we went through the idea screening and selection of the idea, using the COWS matrix. We listed out a few important criteria and decided which idea works best based on those criteria.
Last but not least, we went through the materials for design for our product and have decided the following:
- Handle and brush head: ABS plastic
- Bristles: silicone
- Cushion and handle grip: rubber
ABS plastic is water resistant and can be molded easily with a variety of colours.
Silicone is soft and flexible so it will be able to clean the scalp and the hair without damaging it.
Rubber is soft and can be easily molded to provide grip so that it won't slip while the product is being used.
My group's product is called the HIHHY Hairbrush. The name is inspired from the initials of our group members, Hannah, Isabelle, Hariz, Hong Yi. 😂
The operating principle of this product utilizes a rack and pinion. The operating principle is Positive Displacement. The gear will allow the rack to push the hair care product into the hair brush component and the chemical engineering principle is Rheology. Next, I will talk about the design specification of the HIHHY Hairbrush.
Design Specification
Design specification provides the product design teams with the information they need to build out new features or functionality of a product. Good design specs allow product designers to answer some questions such as What are we building? or What should the final build achieve? or How do we measure success? The picture provide information about the types of specification.
However, design specification
=/= what the product actually it. It is merely to help with the design phase. Thus, this is the specification table that my team and I have created.
Specification table
Aspect | Specification Metric (or Quality) | Quantitative Value |
Physical | Portable | - |
Compact | 240mm X 60mm X 25mm |
Lightweight | < 200g |
Functional | Chemical Resistant | Strong resistance to corrosive chemicals |
Volume of storage for hair product | 50 mL |
Ease of loading hair product into the device/ Set-up duration | < 15s |
Corrosion Resistant | Excellent Resistance |
|
|
Others | Inexpensive | < $30 |
Sustainability | Body and handle of hairbrush (ABS plastic) : recyclable
Bristles (silicon) : can be recycled and reused
Cushion and grip (rubber) : not one of the more sustainable natural products. |
|
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Next is the prototyping process. Dr. Noel tasked us to create a prototype using cardboard joineries that we have learned or by 3D printing. First we had to sketch out what our product will look like. We decided that our product will be detachable. The sketches look something like this.
We decided to use tab and slot for the handle. We visualized the brush head to be as drawn in the picture above, the slot will have inner threads and the handle will have an extrusion portion with threads on it. But for simplicity sake, we just created an extrusion portion on the cardboard.
Next will be the sketch of the rack and pinion.
This will be how the rack and pinion will be positioned in the handle. The hair care product can be poured into the handle through the extrusion part. We didn't know how to create the brush head on the cardboard, thus we decided to use 2 circles to help us to create a perfect oval.
Next up is the fabrication process.
We need to create the rack, the gear, the main body and the brush head.
For the rack, this is how we have drawn it on the cardboard and made multiple copies to thicken it.
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Next is the gear, we drew 3 circles on the cardboard and cut it out, put them together by glue and create the teeth of the gear is created by using the flute of the cardboard and it looks something like this.
Next up is the brush head, as mentioned earlier, we did not know how to create it accurately, but with the help of 2 conjoined circles, we managed to cut it out which looks like
After putting the rack together, this is how it looks like
Next will be assembling the rack and pinion in the body.
We needed to create holes for the bristles and pores on the brush head, thus we used a satay stick to create those holes.
Next is assembling the brush head... In order to create the walls, we used a string to measure the oval and measured that length on the ruler. Then we taped the walls onto the top and bottom brush head parts. Then we inserted the cotton buds, to imitate the bristles, into the holes.
Before I show the final product, I will show you how our CADD looks like which can provide a comparison between our product and the product we designed.
Now for our Final Product made by cardboard 😱
The next few videos shows how the mechanism is used in the prototype.
Lastly, our last hero shot for this module! 🔥🔥
This marks the end of ICPD. I feel that this semester as a whole is harder than the year 1 semesters. Not only are the theories harder to grasp and more detailed, there is a lot more project works as well. But as a whole, the whole journey was very fruitful and we managed to learn about a lot of stuff. I can never forget that even despite my laziness, documentation will be very important to help us in the future. And through this module, it emphasized the importance of documentation. I am very grateful for everything I have been through this semester, including my teammates for this module since they were extremely cooperative and helpful. Last but not least, I would also like to thank Dr. Noel for being with us through this whole module and making the module more fun than I thought it would be. Thank you for reading and
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