PROTOTYPING
I made 3 main prototypes; a functional prototype, a low fidelity laser cut cardboard model, and a medium fidelity 3D printed handling model.
I used a functional prototype to validate the smallest physical size that Caldo could be before I started designing the product from a user stand-point.
The functional prototype was a huge design task that evolved substantially as the project progressed, but fundamentally comprised of 2 computer cooling fans, a gas powered soldering iron, and a heat sink which I fabricated in the metal workshop. (In my prototype, the handle of the soldering iron is simply the gas chamber, and protrudes from the main body of the prototype.)
After the functional prototype had validated the size, I set about designing the 'skin' of the product - eventually refining my design through a mixture of hand sketching, CAD modelling and paper/cardboard modelling. Once I was relatively close to my 'final' design, I produced a low fidelity cardboard model, using the backing cardboard from my layout pads.
Once I produced the design and CAD model, the cardboard model only took a few hours to produce, no money, and gave me a physical object which was the size of my proposed design and showed me the location of the fans within it, providing me some early usability and interaction testing with my product, if only for myself.
Importantly, this model threw up a major issue with the dryer, that differently sized and shaped boots required a significantly different positioning to achieve maximum efficiency due to the ankle padding often obscuring the air-flow channel.
Following my choice of flexible 'leg' to position the dryer, I 3D printed just one corner of the model in order to test out various solutions for the clip retaining mechanism for the legs.
Finally I produced the full 3D printed handling model of the dryer. I laser cut the grill, and placed fans in the product as well, so that the user could better imagine the product.
Each model was critical in informing the design at various different stages, and were I to continue with the project I would need to make another high fidelity model, which was painted, and really looked like the finished product.
In an ideal world I would have love to combine the functional model and the handling prototype, however the difficulty lies in the catalytic burner, as I would need bespoke parts in order to fit the technology within the body, which would easily be plausible on a mass manufacture scale, but not for one off production.
