What's Your Cup of Tea?, DIY Design and Fabrication
Fall 2021

The project for this class was to create something out of solely acrylic that would be an accessory to something that holds a drink. Whatever it is that we made had to have some significance or need in our own life and have a story behind it.

Initial Ideas

I started out with a few different applications: an extra handle for a mug, a special plate for eating khari biscuits with tea, a easier to open and sip from lid to a second water bottle I have, and finally a cup holder converter for my lap desk that could hold my mug. My initial sketch concept ideas and some more backstory behind these ideas are below.

Initially my ideas were about convenience rather than any actual need. I thought of the idea for a second hand for a mug because when I'm tired, I would rather not have to grip the handle. With two handles, I could simply loop my hands underneath them and drink from the mug that way. This is something I've tried to do with a regular mug before, but the balance just isn't right. While this would be useful especially when I'm tired, it wasn't very unique.

My final idea is what I did choose because it would be the most useful. My final solution was a combination of a few sketches- using heat forming to bend the acrylic, press fits, and a bottom ring. I tend to use my contigo water bottle mentioned above most of the time including at night. When I wash it in the evening, I let it dry and so use a mug for my water at night. However, the cup holder on my lap desk is too small for it. While it can simply sit on the desk, I did come up with this idea as a result of almost knocking my mug over one night after this project was assigned because I'm so used to simply grabbing my bottle at a certain height and if I miss slightly there's nothing to worry about. With nothing to stop its motion, my mug very well could have fallen if I was more sleepy. While it would fall on carpet, the water could go on wires and I've cracked multiple things with falls on carpets before. From this, I realized that this was the perfect idea for my project. I have a mood board for telling this story more abstractly and another that I used for design inspiration.

Thinking along the lines of mugs, I thought of having a special plate to place my mug, khari biscuits, and tea when I have it. I don't like my tea too strong, so I often don't leave the tea bag in too long. Often when I take it out, I simply leave it on the plate which can get the khari biscuits soaked with tea before I want to dip them into the tea and so are soggy, This idea was something I drew out quickly, bt really isn't that useful as I can simply throw my tea bag out sooner and it seemed too simple; as a result, I just made one sketch for it.

I have a second water bottle that I don't use much because I've grown used to and really love my contigo water bottle. However, when I wash it during the day, it would be nice to use my other one so that I can let it dry. The other one I have is a really nice and big and is well insulated. While that is really nice, it's screw top and bigger opening have caused my to use it less as it takes longer to open and spills easily especially if I'm in a car or speed walking somewhere. As a result, I came up with some ideas for different lids that would be easier to open and would have a smaller opening for the water. I ultimately decided against this idea because of the rules not actually allowing acrylic dowel pins, the lack of a feature on the bottle to be able to grab onto, and the small likelihood of it being fully water tight meaning that it wouldn't really reduce spills.

The next two ideas I really considered so have a few more sketches for them.

Story Mood Board

Concept Mood Board

Process Work

I knew that I wanted to use thicker acrylic like .25", but I wasn't sure about the feasibility of bending it which many of my cooler looking ideas incorporated. Because of this, this first thing I did was test to see if I could bend the .25" scrap acrylic at 90 degree angles. This worked out even better than expected as just this piece was easily able to hold my friends pencil case which was about the weight of my water bottle with the amount of water shown. This initial test helped to determine my path as I really liked the clear bent acrylic aesthetic which would make it appear as if my mug was floating. From further testing with this, I learned that the minimum bend radius was much too large to use this wide a strip and have a flat part resting in the bottle holder.

Instead of having a flat part on a strip resting on the bottom of the bottle holder, I decided to have a ring that fit into the holder well for press fitting the bent pieces into. I chose to make the width of the bent pieces that would hold the mug be .5" which is a little under half of my first test piece. In choosing how many supports I wanted, I liked the idea of it being in a star shape so decided on 5. I also wasn't sure whether or not the bent strips would be able to support the mug with all the weight being on the outside compared to where it was press fit, so made more rectangles in the beginning in case I wanted to so that it would be easy to test. Ultimately I found that this wasn't necessary, which I was glad to find because the rectangular cutouts did deform from being close the heat. With the bases shown on the left, I tested and fine tuned a few different things- the laser cutter settings to cut it out in 2 passes, the fit into the bottle holder, and the length the rectangle needed to be for the thickness of the acrylic being press fit in. The smaller pieces had been cut out with different tolerances to also create the best fit. At this point, I realized that the acrylic definitely wasn't anywhere near .25" and when I measured it, it was .218" which is not a thickness sold on campus, As a result, I made sure to grab more sheets of this from the scrap bin because it was what I was getting measurements based on.

I next tested the bend radius's possible on strips like I would be using. I found that .4" was feasible and repeatable so used that to calculate the length of strip I needed to use such that it could support my mug fully and be grabbed at the same height as I usually would my bottle. Even with an achievable bend radius, I did break quite a few strips if I used too much force or didn't let it heat up enough. Because of all my strip testing, I had to go back and cut more out; however, the laser cutter settings I used before were no longer powerful enough to cut the same. My press fits no longer were so I had to change the holes for this based on this change.

One of the biggest challenges I had was bending all the strips to be the exact same height and flat where the mug rested. By the end, I got into a rhythm for bending them properly with the heat gun, but if I didn't hold the shape for long enough it would sometimes loosen a bit so that the angle wasn't quite right. I also learned that I needed to get it right the first time as if I tried to bend it further down after it cooled I would inevitably crack it or deform it to have a weird dip. In bending these I did make one where the top vertical section slanted inwards instead of being straight; this looked better and supported my mug a bit better so I did this for the final strips.

When I had 5 in the base, I found that I didn't really like how it looked. To me it appeared too crowded and looked more like a claw or cactus than a star when not looking directly from the top. A perfect top view though is not seen in use. I then chose to make a 3 strip base so that it would looked cleaner and better overall.