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When Non-Designers Beat Us: Couple Creates Superior Anti-Clogging Drain Device
Any idea how this thing is made?
Industrial designers: Do you find it stings when non-designers invent a successful product that you should have thought of?
Serge and Elena Karnegie identified a problem that everyone with running water has: Drains must be periodically cleared of hair or else they clog. If you've ever had to use one of these things…
Enter a caption (optional)…then you know how disgusting the clearing procedure can be.
What the long-haired, pet-owning Karnegies came up with is this:
Enter a caption (optional)
Enter a caption (optional)The TubShroom, as they call it, relies on a principle that is a problem with vacuum cleaner rollers: Strands of hair, when propelled with any kind of force, like to wrap around cylindrical things. But because the TubShroom is made of soft silicone, the ringlet of hair comes off with a single wipe.
What's interesting is that the Karnegies sought funding on both Kickstarter and IndieGogo—and smashed it on both. They gathered $59,267 on the former and about $120,000 on the latter.
That was last year. This year they've returned to Kickstarter with a smaller version called, unsurprisingly, the SinkShroom. The $12 device has already been 400% funded, and there's 18 days left to pledge if you want one.
Enter a caption (optional)
Enter a caption (optional)Question for those of you with molding experience: Can you describe the mold required to make one of these? Here's the largest photo I could find:
Enter a caption (optional)I get that you can do things with softer silicone that you couldn't with rigid plastic, but I can't figure out the holes on the vertical shaft (nor what those dark lines are between the columns of holes). Obviously there's a core that provides the central cavity—if you can't tell, the bottom of the object has a large hole in it—but is this core studded with stubby cylinders, or are the holes created by the surrounding parts of the mold? In the photo above, there appears to be draft angle on the holes making them wider on the outside, which mystifies me.
The Karnegies have revealed that the tooling for the TubShroom ran $12,000, if that gives you any clue. Am dying to hear from the mold-savvy among you.
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Rain, who are you calling "non-designers?" Anyone without formal education? Seems to be a popular subject for your articles. This led me to fall down the internet rabbit hole searching for evidence that you, are in fact, a designer.
Surely all the author meant to draw attention to is that the couple who came up with this product are not professional designers, yet the design is effective and reasonably well executed.
You can see the flash on the interior edge of the vertical wall holes so the core tool must be smooth, with the holes molded from the outside. My bet is the core and top of the mold retract first, leaving the part inside a tool "ring" still on the bumps for the vertical holes- then compressed air is used to help pull the part out of the tool. From my experience in silicone production facilities you can really wiggle a part out with some air and hand protection against the hot mold!
Radial action seems overkill but possible. Simple side action will easily strip out of a low durometer silicone while the core and cavity remain in place.
Most likely hand labor instead of sliders. The mold is probably a simple main cavity, and the annular die with the side holes is dropped in place. After molding, the die and the rubber is ejected, and the die peeled off by hand. Cleaned and reinserted. K.I.S.S. for small volume runs.
My guess as well.
There are probably 4 major parts to the mold tool. if it is a more traditional method, like compression molding, someone might actually be peeling parts off of sections of the tool.
yes radial sliders i think. kind of like the chuck on a lathe. easier to do since pressure required for silicone not as high as for regular plastic. (?)
Similar to drainage inlets that you see on farms.
It looks like there are a few vertical witness lines between the vertical holes, so I'd guess multiple sliding parts around the outside.
I thought about that, but I count twelve columns of holes; do you reckon it's possible they have 12 parts that slide outwards? I'm a bit out-of-touch with current mold pricing but didn't think 12 grand would cover something that involved.
Unlikely... Its more plausible that these are some sort of flow or knit lines showing up because the material has flow around all those holes.