Bottle Opener

Engineering Analysis: A cantilever, which is defined as a beam anchored only at one end. While force is being applied to the bottle cap, the bottle opener has a full moment connection. One edge of the bottle opener is inserted under the metalwork and another point uses a fulcrum point on which to pivot when an upward force is applied to the handle. One main issue that we had with the final design was that the part of the opening that was inserted under the cap chipped off on the edge. This could have been fixed by making the height of the opener smaller. This would've put the bottom edge at a different angle from the cap, possibly fixing the chipping problem.

Design Process:

We began with many designs, but ended up deciding between a "Crown Cork" opener and our final, simple opener. 

Initial drawings of chosen design. 

The most important measurements we took were the ones for the actual opening of our bottle opener. We had to make sure that it would fit around the cap on the sides and that the pivot point on the top of the cap was as near to the center as it could be.

More detailed measurements to be transferred to foamcore prototype.

Cutting the foamcore prototype.

Checking the prototype on the bottle.

Final measurements to be transferred to Solidworks. 

Solidworks design before extrusion. 

One of our biggest challenges was learning how to use Solidworks. We had to figure out how to use all of the shapes in the right way in order to create our design. 

Laser-cut iterations (right opener was our final).  

Reflection: We decided on the design that we did because one of our worries with the "Crown Cork" design was that the tip would break off. We still had chipping issues with our opener but the edge wasn't nearly as thin as the tip of the other design's would have been. We began with over 30 designs, although many were variations of the final two that we decided between. When we chose our final general design, we combined it and altered it, drawing inspiration from other ideas. We decided on the teeth because we thought that they would provide a good surface with which to press on the cap ( and they were cute). The bottom of the "mouth" was rounded in order to make it slip under the cap. The rest of the design was just to go with our "monster" theme. After drawing it on paper, making a prototype, and drawing it in Solidworks (with a few mouth alterations along the way, including making the mouth a bit smaller and wider), we were ready to cut. The first cut was scaled too large and slipped right over our bottle cap so we made a second, smaller design. This one worked but (as mentioned above), still chipped at the bottom of the mouth which could've been fixed by changing the single of opening by making the mouth smaller. Besides that, other options for changes were taking away the handle which would have allowed for more freedom in the angle of opening and eliminated the possibility of the handle breaking off.