Designing a pencil case for kids!

hello Imgur! so expository back story, I'm studying industrial design and this semester we had to design hard shell pencil cases. I decided my focus would be towards kids. the requirements were that it have a hinge and 2 snaps to hold it closed. so I decided to try and hide those two things by incorporating them visually in my product.

so once we had fleshed out the details of our product, we had to model it in 3D so we could have a blueprint to work with when we actually make it!

I started by laser cutting a few templates to ease the process

basically I needed to make 2 molds, one for the top half and one for the bottom

once i had all my parts cut, i had to glue everything together. the rods are inserted to make sure the layers don't slide around when I clamp them

the top mold all glued!

bottom mold coming along.

once both mold halves were done it was time to start the hard part, shaping it.

to shape the mold I mostly used my hands to get the shape, as the complex geometry made it hard to use any of the machines we have at school

eventually I went out and got an angle grinder to spare my arm of some near teenage levels of soreness.

the two halves finely sanded

fitment

we mold our products with a vacuum forming machine so I couldn't just mold the whale without each half having a base.

when each base is cut you need to drill holes for the air to be pulled through in the vacuum forming process

all waxed up to make de-molding easier

this was so satisfying #sorrynogif

after a bit of trimming I can see some hope to finishing, but the hardest part was yet to come

chop chop. don't worry I traced a proper line after.

creating the lip features.

the hinge! we use polystyrene and we chemically bond it with solvent, so in the end it's pretty solid.

the tail had to be made of bass wood otherwise I'd probably need to make another two molds...

paint it up

he's getting there!

these were so hard for my fat fingers to glue together, but nothing some vigorous sanding can't fix

and we're there!

I wet sanded him and glued a pencil sharpener in his blow hole to finish him off :D

lotta pencils in derrr

#narwhal

it took a long time, but I'm really proud of it. it's amazing to think it started as a few lines on a piece of paper and now it exists in the real world!