Enterprise

Day 16 – Box Finale

Howdy,

Today Angelo introduced us to the final box design for our Gusto chocolates. Our design now has a definitive colour and it looks far more finished than our original prototypes. The design still required some refinement in the details, however the main style was now done.

New Box

Angelo, Lorna and I worked together to slightly redesign some of the problems areas and soon we had a design we were happy to produce en masse.

Setting up the laser cutter was a challenge due to it’s tendency to stop working for no apparent reason, however we persisted and found which settings worked best on the cutter. We had managed to streamline the production process for the boxes by preloading the files onto the cutter and then manning the cutter only when needed. The cutter made a useful beep to confirm it had finished each process and so we needed only return to start the next.

We had also noticed that we lacked a few of the 3d printed objects for the moulds and so we set to work creating yet more moulds.

Whilst Angelo continued to print some more objects, Lorna and I sought out the help of one of the product deign technicians – Keith, who we hoped could help us find some vacuum forming plastics that would be food safe yet also produce detailed and high quality chocolates. Keith allowed us to use a large section of some 1mm clear PETG food safe sheet. Lorna and I worked on cutting this to size for the vacuum former and started to form immediately. This process was very much trial and error, and Lorna & I came up with quite a few errors…

The plastic was slightly harder to judge the flexibility of and it seemed to deform from stiff to completely out of shape in a matter of seconds. We did manage to create some decent moulds which did reflect a large amount of the detail from the 3d models, which I would deem a success. It was interesting to use the vacuum forming machine again and I feel that I am beginning to become more familiar with the controls and the technique required for using the machine. It does seem however that this specific machine can be slightly unpredictable which is concerning, especially seeing how we only have a very small collection of materials.

Thankfully, Keith appeared in the workshops towards the end of the day and so he was able to oversee our final mould being made, which ensured the quality was higher than our previous attempt. At the end of the day today, we now have 2 – 3 usable moulds for making chocolates tommorow as well as a starting point for our boxes.

I feel I have learned a great deal about mass production and manufacture for sales today, with our boxes and moulds being made, it feels a lot like we are really getting somewhere and I feel that our teamwork is overcoming all obstacles that seem to arise.