Uni Yr 2: Contemporary Food Blender

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Task: Design a Food Blender for a modern domestic market

Food Blender brief:

Design a food blender promoting a healthier lifestyle. Adopting an eco-design style, to designing for disassembly and recycling at end of life. Using PLA to decrease plastic impact on environment, and house standard blender internal components.

Visual Inspiration:

From consumer research I identified 3 suitable directions that hold healthy living high in their reason for trusting the brand or product:

Gym Enthusiast Young Homeowner Executive Kitchen

Design Directions:

From the above mood boards as inspiration developing designs in these 3 directions:

Executive Kitchen Direction Refinement:

After Presenting the initial design directions, the client chose the executive kitchen style. From this I took the design most suited to the Alessi brand to refine further.

Starting with the form I tested possible grip designs and researching rubberised materials settling on the double helix TPU grip design. Moving on to the spout and lid design. Settling on a wide spout, with a magnetic ring round the base of the spout to attach the lid seamlessly and securely.

In terms of the products function, I refined the blade and motor spindle housing, to improve blending strength, and make the product easy to disassemble when washing after use and end of life. With the spindle being locked into the motor via water proof screws. and a twist lock system to connect the mechanism to the housing to go between blending and pouring quickly.

Physical Prototype:

Once refined, and dimensioned, I then created a cardboard model to test the design and size in a real world situation. using the product to test pourer spout, the double helix grip and position of the on/off and speed level buttons. Using this to improve and finalise the products design.

The Final Product:

Using the Alessi ethos, to develop the form of the product. Inspired by the Lemon squeezer and Changi airport in Singapore, to develop a structurally stable and easy to use blender. With a strong TPU grip to improve the products weight balance when in use. Designed as a statement of function and aesthetic in an executive kitchen.

The Blender is predominantly made from PLA, due to its recyclability, efficiency and ease of manufacture with Thermoplastic manufacturing techniques. The manufacturing process’s in use include Injection moulding for the internal component housing and lid where Blow moulding is used to produce the transparent blending body.