Tea Box
Fabrication
Adobe Illustrator, Fusion 360, Laser Cutter, 3D printer
January - February, 2023
Design Process
Overview
Design a box/container (max 7"x7", min 3"x3", wall thickness 1/16"-3/8") to hold a specific object(s) or fit in a specific space. The box and its contents should have a meaningful relationship, whether based on shape, story, or other connection.
Target Problem
My roommate and I faced a clutter issue with our overflowing tea bags. Limited cabinet space and deteriorating paper boxes made organization difficult. To address this, I designed a custom tea bag organizer that would efficiently store our collection within the available space, while also sticking to the assignment guidelines. The goal was to create a more organized and aesthetically pleasing solution to a shared problem.
Drafting Part 1
To address our overflowing tea bags, I designed a durable organizer with two rows and a lid. This box would replace our current, fragile paper containers, offering a more efficient and permanent storage solution.
Digital Sketches
I created five orthographic and two isometric views to visualize the initial design, including measurements for height and width. Wall thickness was omitted at this stage due to the uncertainty of the final material, but the design was flexible enough to accommodate various wood thicknesses.
My first draft was a simple box with two spacious compartments for tea storage. As this was my initial concept, I remained open to adjustments and improvements.
Drafting Part 2
Recognizing the inconvenience of a lidded box within our cabinet, I incorporated feedback to improve the design. Research into existing tea organizers led me to a more practical approach. Inspired by a similar design, I created a smaller, open-shelf organizer that would allow for easier access to our tea bags.
The new design offers a cleaner aesthetic, increased storage capacity, and convenient accessibility without the need for a lid. By adapting the found design to our project constraints, I created a two-shelf organizer that maintains the desired height of seven inches. This open design significantly improved the user experience by allowing for quick and easy tea selection.
Digital Sketches
Prototype
To validate the design and measurements, I created a cardboard prototype using a laser cutter. This rapid prototyping method enabled quick assembly and testing, revealing some measurement discrepancies. Specifically, the divider was too tall compared to the front face. Despite being made of cardboard, the prototype proved surprisingly durable, and I was pleasantly surprised by its overall quality and functionality.
3D Final
To refine the design further, I redesigned the tea box in Fusion 360. However, printing the entire box at once in a 3D printer proved to be time-consuming, with an estimated print time of nearly two days due to the shelves and support structures. This significant delay presented a challenge, as I didn't have enough time to oversee the entire printing process.
After careful consideration, I decided to split the box into two halves, printing them vertically to reduce print time. However, this approach still required substantial support structures, leading to prolonged printing times. To address this issue, I further divided each half into two parts, creating four separate sections (top and bottom shelves). This strategy allowed for simultaneous printing, significantly reducing the overall time and enabling me to complete the project.
Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I was only able to print two of the four sections, resulting in half of the final tea box. However, printing the remaining two sections would have been straightforward, and gluing them together would have completed the full organizer.
Even though it's not fully assembled yet, the printed sections already show how much more organized and space-saving this design is. It's a huge improvement over our old, cluttered tea setup, making it so much easier to find the tea we want and freeing up cabinet space.
