Newly Released Work (All Product Types)

Not as interesting as the camera, but my first real mass production product to come to market here at Bould Design: GoPro HD3 cables. This was a project that I worked on early last year, when I was still quite new, but its recently come on the market with the new HD3 camera release. Bould Design also worked on the camera design, but this is the part I had the most input on. A great way to demonstrate that even the smallest and least noticed parts of a well designed product have meticulous thought and consideration put into it.

Pretty awesome to know that these are getting shipped with every single GoPro HD3 though!

Nice! Congrats! Nice to have worke on such a high profile brand!

Nice! I deeply respect any brand that will design and manufacture their own cables. Did the concept 3 come after someone said concept 2 was too expensive?

@Yo: Thanks! Even though they’re just lowly cables, it feels great to hold something in your hand that started as a sketch from your pen.

@engio: Yeah making your own branded cables definitely takes your product up a notch. And it was a great small project for a junior like me to take from beginning to end.

My first submission to this thread! Launched at Ambiente in Frankfurt two weeks ago, and about to be shown at Chicago too.
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I’m curious to get some feedback from the design community on the project that’s consumed the last couple years of my life. The Bottle Lift has been developed to address an ergonomic and safety issue around using liquid chromatography systems in a laboratory environment. LC systems are typically quite tall, and require bottles of consumable solvents mounted on top of the units. There are several reasons for their placement, but the main reason being that these machines somewhat rely on gravity feeding of the solvents.

This imposes safety and ergonomics issues for the operators when it comes to monitoring solvent levels, or replacing solvent bottles, due to the height of the units. For most operators it is necessary to climb on structures or ladders to monitor and replace solvents.

The Bottle Lift System places solvent bottles at your fingertips for safe, easy fluid management. It eliminates the risk of climbing up ladders or other structures to replace, refill, or view solvents for your liquid chromatography equipment. This ergonomically-designed lift system delivers bottles to the bench top so you can safely and comfortably load and unload solvents. A simple touch pad moves the bottle platform up and down the column. The momentary push buttons ensure that the system is only in motion when there is an operator present. The clear platform allows you to easily monitor liquid levels, while the quick release system allows you to clean any spilled fluids or replace platforms.

The actuator is driven by a trapezoidal lead screw, which provides inherent safety and will not back drive in the event of a power loss or system failure. The cost of lab space is monumental, and it’s crucial that we minimized our footprint and occupied space. The footprint of the unit is only 155mm wide x 347mm long, and has been designed to mount to existing lab benches and pair up with current HPLC installs. The mounting location places the bottle platform in the empty space in front of the bench. The system features a helical path of travel. As the unit reaches the top of its travel, it swings over the top of the HPLC unit and out of the isle, further utilizing empty space.

It’s a very simple unit, and addresses a real need in the laboratory environment. We have a couple of units at customer sites and released the product officially at the SLAS trade show in January. The response from the community has far exceeded our expectations. It’s been patented and we’re gearing up for our first production release.

I am a design engineer with a background in machining and race car mechanics. I’m not an industrial designer by any means, but I’m curious to some feedback from people on the thoughts of the units aesthetics. Manufacturing cost and simplicity have both been the biggest driver for this product.

Website:
http://www.thebottleliftsystem.com/


Typical HPLC units:

The Bottle Lift System:

Installed:

Operation:

Rad Sketches! and great concept.

For most operators it is necessary to climb on structures or ladders to monitor and replace solvents.

I realize you are addressing an existing problem. But as an industrial designer a basic question comes to mind … why aren’t these “stand alone” machines? If they were not placed on a counter the consumables would be at roughly waist height?

There is a lot of operator interaction at a bench-top level. If the units were floor standing you’d end up with the opposite problem of having operators needing to crouch down to operate the machine. Obviously if there was a redesign at the system level you might get around this, but these are $250K machines, I would have to imagine a lot of thought has gone into all of it.

… these are $250K machines, I would have to imagine a lot of thought has gone into all of it.



This imposes safety and ergonomics issues for the operators when it comes to monitoring solvent levels, or replacing solvent bottles, due to the height of the units. For most operators it is necessary to climb on structures or ladders to monitor and replace solvents.

Apparently not quite enough…

I’m curious to some feedback from people on the thoughts of the units aesthetics.

Around here we thrive on “process”. Do you have any development sketches, mock-up photos, etc. showing your path to the end of this problem? Are you still resolving form issues, or is this a “production” unit? Since you’re offering it for sale on your website, I’d say yes. Kind of late in the game for a design critique, wouldn’t you say?

but I’m curious to some feedback from people on the thoughts of the units aesthetics.

Well, its brutal to look at. Given that the priorities seem to be raising the bottles to the working height, and then monitoring levels as time/experiments go on, qualities or features that foreground those issues could drive the ID. Then the aspect of adding or removing big glass bottles could inform the tray shape and contours, perhaps eliminating some of the hard steel edges, definitely the screw heads holding the trays to the steel.

I take it the lift could be used with a number of other machines, so there’s no brand equities to borrow from there…?

I have about 10 products that were made public today at the Housewares Show in Chicago. This one is my favorite of the group.

It’s part of a whole pie story where we found the opportunity to redesign tools in a very antiquated market. We wanted them to relate to a new generation of women who are very ambitious and competitive about their creations. If you’ve ever looked at Pinterest, you know what I’m talking about. These tools also had to be essential and compact, easily stored in a kitchen and not just another “contraption that will take up too much precious space.”

This “Tri-Cutter” was designed to be more functional with three different pastry cutting wheels, while convenient and safe to store with its compact form and wheel covers.



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Congrats Garrett. 10 products in one day, must be a huge relief to be able to talk about them!

Thanks for your feedback.

Lmo- I am a mechanical engineer, my sketches and concepts are little more than chicken scratch. I don’t have the sketching and rendering skills of most people here, nor do I save anything. Everything I do is done through CAD. I don’t know what the priorities are at the companies developing these units, however we have recognized a serious H&S issue with their layouts and come up with a solution to it. If enough of these units sell it would be nice to invest more into the form and come up with a sexier look and feel for these and future units. Currently I’m content with where it is based on manufacturing constraints.

This product has a sell price (quantity dependent) of only $6K. That’s fully manufactured stateside in New England. This includes the lift system, platform, electrical control box with switch and cord-sets, packaging, install kits, and tubing kits. This unit will lift 50lbs of cantilevered load smoothly and quietly. Cost to market along with functionality and reliability were the primary goals. I agree that exposed fasteners are not ideal along with hard edges, however eliminating those things without adding cost is difficult to do. If this was a product that was going to sell hundreds of thousands it definitely makes sense to have molds made and introduce compound curves etc. , however with production runs of 500 units at a time, it’s difficult to amortize $90K mold costs.

Thanks again for the feedback.

There is an obvious solution to these monstrous benchtop HPLC systems, make them floor standing.

And before you go poo-pooing the idea, this exact same transition happened in the pathology lab 20+ years ago, so let me explain.

Way back in the day, all of the instrumentation that ran tests on your blood (cholesterol, glucose, electrolytes, etc.) were all done benchtop. First completely in a manual method, then they started with automation on the benchtop. Problem is, when you want a higher throughput, more tests run per hour, you need to store more patient samples and the liquid reagents used to perform the test. A larger menu of tests require specific reagents for that test. More stuff.

I started working when the tipping point when the bench was causing issues like shown above. We came up with a large box that sat on the floor. There was plenty of scoffing. Mainly because there is no floor space in labs. They are filled to capacity with benches.

We told the labs to tear out some benches for our box. They laughed. But then we said if you tear out the bench, we will quadruple their capacity in the same floorspace of that bench…

At one point the product had a 90% market share. Benchtop analyzers became obsolete.

Patient samples, test reagent packs and reaction tubes are placed in the ring (about 30 inches off the ground). That stuff gets changed out every couple of hours. Bulk reagents, like shown in the HPLC, are below in the cabinet. There are easy quick releases to change out the bulk bottles. A change would be a maximum of once every 2 days. Squatting once for under a minute to change a bottle is completely acceptable.

I completely agree with you. I have no input on the design of the HPLC equipment itself, nor am I associated with any manufacturers. Simply sought out to address a current problem.

Well then, given the restraints of your production volume, the “after-market” nature of the device, and it’s capability to operate with any manufacturer’s equipment I’d say you nailed it.

I do have one question though… what keeps it from toppling over? Your illustrations don’t show it bolted to the bench top, and the load looks like it would easily over turn when it is rotated over the test equipment.

Just released today! I didn’t even know this was out until a friend told me it was on sale.

Bould Design did the Roku 3 set top box and the remote, and lots of their marketing renderings too.

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Nice Anson! Interesting that headphones plug into the remote?