Product Disassembly Exercise

DISASSEMBLY

50 mins disassembly time for 5 people.

Two different types of screw heads on base plate caused problems during diassembly.
Tabs construction in heating area meant that pieces had to be physically broken in order to fully disassemble - there was no tidy and impermanent way to pull apart.
Electronic components extremely untidy and wrapped around lots of other components. Vast bulk of internal components were joined in this way - heating basket, exterior trim components.

MATERIAL LIST

Aluminium - Main Body casting + exterior visual components;
Galvanised/Corrosion Protected Steel Plate - internal plate components;
Polypropylene - Base plate/chassis, some small internal components;
ABS - button assembly + chrome plated aesthetic finish;
Nylon - electronic housing/heat resistant components;
Rubber/Elastomer - Feet;
Mica sheeting - heat insulation/heating element wrapping
Electronic components - wrapped around front and back of toasting compartment, taking up large volume of toaster internals.

MANUFACTURE METHODS

Aluminium and Steel - sheet forming, cold working, stamping
Aluminium Main Body - Injection moulded, washed and painted/anodised
Nylon - injection moulded
ABS - Injection moulded + Chrome electroplated
Polypropylene - Injection moulded, unfinished

JOINING METHODS

Tabs - sheet metal component joining, aesthetic aluminium
Screws - bosses connect electronics to chassis, chassis to main body,
Heat staking - joining nylon components to internal assemblies; such as button electronics assembly to aluminium sheet component, which was screwed down into bosses on main body.
Adhesive - minimal adhesive use to join button tops to assembly underlays.

FORESEEABLE PROBLEMS + IMPROVEMENTS

Electronic Component Fail - Modular and easily accessible electronic PCB assemblies that can be removed and replaced easily in one operation.

Minimise sheer component numbers

Aluminium main body and parts are easily recycled in theory but main body cast is virgin aluminium.

The 11th Hour

The 11th Hour is a documentary-style video about the relationship between Earth, the animals that inhabit it, and most importantly the impact that we, the human race in our present form, has upon the globe we inhabit.

The film starts by drawing attention to the fact that so many factors of Earth are interrelated - that is to say, the Earth and it's attributes affect humanity, humanity affects the Earth, and the Earth impacts humanity. The Earth gives us the resources we need to create prosperity and abundance, we use this prosperity to further ramp and production and our prosperity "exponential growth" by taking natural resources and affecting the Earth, and this impact on the Earth comes back finally to affect us by way of changing climates, natural disasters, changing weather patterns, and so on. The causative effect between human action and environmental change and thus the effect on humanity is illustrated well and has an impact upon the viewer.

The illustration of the core theme of the documentary is illustrated next, through a sort of metaphor of "borrowed energy" - humanity's use of oil and fossil fuel products and how this "breaks the rules" of traditional human existence. Humanity before the advent of fossil fuel products was locked into a self-limiting system, whereby we could not utilise more energy to produce and create and grow than what was given to us in the form of sunlight. The problem of fossil fuel use is illustrated, by the imagery of "borrowing" energy we are not supposed to have access to. This fossil fuel use has allowed us, in a way, to live on borrowed time where we are utilising the higher energy levels available to us in fossil fuel to power our cars, our homes, our factories and indeed the very tools of our continuing society. This is all well and good except the precedent has been set - a precedent Society has been geared to operate at this high level output where so much is available to us through fossil fuel use, but being a limited resource it is destined to run out and as such our society is not sustainable. Something will have to break - and the point is it will not be nature.

I think this is the main point of the documentary, and most of the interviewees refer to this plight of humanity.

The film is fairly boring for the most part - the interviews are not very engaging oftentimes. The middle in particular I really felt the compulsion to skip. The end with its possible solutions are probably the best part, where the idea of building cities in the mould of a forest where we produce enough energy to power ourselves is novel and provides some real models and ideas and innovation for the future. As a product designer this is what there should have been more of!

How It's Made + New Life

These series of videos are interesting and useful for differing reasons.

Both are useful and informative in presenting information about presenting information firstly about how certain types of packaging are made (How It's Made) and how those types of packaging material are processed at their end of life (well, in Germany, anyway.)

I was already mostly aware of the techniques and methods presented by the videos of How It's Made, in the sense that I knew how these things were made. As part of the videos though there were more accurate statistics presented as to just what percentages of packaging products are made up of recycled materials, and correspondingly how high or low these percentages are. Some items are made up of high percentages of recycled material, while some are disappointingly and surprisingly low. For instance, according to the video aluminium can be recycled to very near to 100% efficiency and no losses; but polyethylene terephthalate bottles can only contain just 10% recycled material!

I also found interesting the efficiency in terms of wall thickness of aluminium materials - aluminium products such as cans and tubes have very fine wall thicknesses, which is advantageous for a myriad of reasons when we think about it - reduced emissions and energy input in transport, weight reduction, and reduced space taken up in post-life when the product is crushed and transported to recycling plants.

It is somewhat disconcerting however the huge amount of operations by automated machinery on some packaging items, however - an instance is the creation of the top edge of soft drink aluminium cans requiring 11 distinct manufacturing operation steps to create just a rounded rim! Each step of this would require additional energy input!

There are some logical fallacies some of the videos present that I think may be problematic - they use terms like "green" and "ecofriendly" but don't really define in what sense they actually ARE ecofriendly or green. They claim glass to be ecofriendly because it does not require deforestation, but from my own research glass takes approximately somewhere between 500 up to 1,000,000 years to biodegrade/decompose. At either of these times that is a long time that glass will be taking up space in landfill or in the natural environment. That alone is definitely not ecofriendly! However in glass's defence, it can utilise 90% recycled material and has a lower melt temperature than virgin glass, saving energy.

I still have questions about some parts of production, such as the environmental effects of adhesives in cardboard and paints used on almost all of the packaging items. These questions were not answered in the videos.

New Life is very short and only covers Germany's recycling program which admittedly looks quite efficient and cost effective. The thing I found most interesting and insightful was the method and precision of material sorting, seperation and categorisation of recyclable materials. This is important because impurities in recyclable materials can damage the final product of the recycling process and affect its ability to be reused in new products.

In addition, the New Life series also made light of interesting facts, such as Germany's aluminium packaging products being made from recycled material; and 2.7 million tonnes of waste glass being recycled every year.
According to this video too, recycled aluminium only uses 5% of the original energy of production.

Concept Development

Sheet Metal

My sheet metal project - a low coffee table. Folded from one sheet of laser-cut 3mm marine-grade aluminium, polished on the outside and painted with acrylic spray on the inside.

Design For Life - Starck

Design for Life follows Phillippe Starck on a quest for a young modern designer from Britain. Hundreds of aspiring young designers send in drawings to Starck's agency, and he chooses 12 of his favourites to come and compete in Paris for a 6 month placement in his own design agency.

It was interesting to see how much these young designers get away with! It seemed like there was less restriction placed on them than we are given in Studio at times, which came as a surprise to me definitely!

It was interesting also to see the ways in which Starck critiqued their work in much the same way as it is done in our classes, and encourages me that criticism like we receive is helpful and will enable us to find the best solution at the end.
It was also helpful to see the ways in which designers work in a real life scenario and the many different groups of professionals that interaction takes place with in the production of a real life object such as either Mike or Ilsa's major projects towards the end of the show (early on this was not really possible to see, with no prototypes or branding involved.)

Furthermore it was interesting to see some limitations the competitors put on themselves that when watching them from the outside you can see how this limits them and stops them from reaching the full potential of an idea or of their own creative inspiration. This happened a number of times throughout the show to different participants, and I know it happens to everyone as they attempt to find a solution.

It was a good show to watch, but it is a bit long, and perhaps the final couple of episodes are the most useful and informative because the early ones include a lot of padding.

As a post-script, I think Phillipe Starck is hilarious. There was one particular part I can't find a picture of, but it was fantastic.

Objectified

Objectified is a documentary style film that focuses on individual designers and how they work, their experiences, their style and so on.

I found this documentary very interesting as it documented the work of various influential designers such as Jonathon Ives, the Bouroullec brothers, Dieter Rams, Marc Newson and also design consultancies and professionals. I saw this as an interesting insight into the professional design world and how the superstars of the world operate.

As well as this, the video had a number of interesting points featuring real-life examples and modern design icons such as the Apple iPhone.

Mostly however the show is about philosophy and working methods. Newson talks about the importance of designing for the future, the Bouroullecs talk about design refinement being like a musical harmony, and Rams talks about design modicum like his 10 points for good design.

It was interesting seeing the designers in their natural element and to hear their individual opinions on design itself. However I would have liked to have seen some documentation of a real-life product all the way through from conception to realisation, especially when you would have been able to see the designer's philosophies acting on a real life product at the time.

However still very interesting to see the real-life designers working themselves and utilising their working methods.