CNC Manufactured Bottle Opener + Orange Juicer
Wanting to get personal experience in computer controlled manufacturing techniques, I enrolled in Stanford's ME318 Computer Aided Product Creation course at the beginning of my junior year. In this course, students are tasked with creating products that include complex 3D geometry as they learn how to manufacture prototypes using a CNC mill and design advanced part geometries in SolidWorks.
As a quick introductory project to the CNC capabilities I created the unique stainless steel bottle opener visible below.
Pop-off type caps can be opened by sliding the bottle cap into the teardrop cutout in the opener's face and then prying it loose with the cantilevered circular extrusion just below center on the front face. Alternatively, twist off caps can be opened using extra leverage from the circular cutout on the back.
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For my term project I chose to create a custom orange juicer made out of aluminum. The smiling sun geometry on the front of the juicer provides a fun twist to your morning orange juice squeeze, while its sharp curving rays provide an ideal surface for extracting juice and pulp from the orange. The thin lip around the edge of the device directs fresh liquid into small holes positioned radially around the sun, thus ensuring that juice flows smoothly into your glass below.
I designed the piece entirely in SolidWorks and then converted the exported .stp file into tool paths using GibbsCAM.
The piece was made from a solid aluminum block mounted to a large fixture plate and cut using a 3-axis Haas CNC machine. Due to the time consuming nature of the deep pockets and intense surfacing operations necessary to create my juicer's geometry, I had to cut the piece during multiple four hour machine sessions, using the fixture plate to re-position before each session and for positioning after my part flip. I used a thin web technique to remove the final part from the fixtured sides of the original 3" x 3" x 1.5" aluminum block during the final tool passes of the machine.
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The end result was a beautiful aluminum orange juicer with a golden orange anodized finish that works exceedingly well on all kinds of citrus fruits while also being very durable and easy to clean. (Note: Photograph taken before anodizing.)
