Speaker Packaging
Cardboard boxes comes in standard sizes, corrugated plastics are weak, therefore building our own box the cheaper way out. Costing 25% of the original price.
I have decided to digitised everything as it makes it easier to visualised how the foam would fit the box, and it makes it easier to dimension the engineering drawing. Keeping track of which version it is, making sure the assembly process could go as smoothly as possible.
The foam is only on the corners as there is where the cabinets would be most vulnerable to dings. This is the “ideal” amount of foam for cost, weights and price.
Previous company’s drawing:
My drawings:
To test out the foam, we built a prototype box. To cut the wood more efficiently, I use a cutting program to help me with this process ,see. We choose to staple the box together as screws would be an overkill and time consuming comparatively to stapling, and the wood thickness is really thin, so staple is better for this application.
We also toyed around with the idea of a crimp grip, either protruding the box, or just a flat cover on the slot. Though it did provide some grip as compared to non, we thought the cargo inside the box was too valuable to be drop that it needed something more grippy.
A prototype of the handle of the box. This is a valuable prototype because it allows us to test how good the grip for the box is. And it is amazing. Though it needs to be reduced in size, as it is believed that the handle plastics is too big, and can be reduced in size to reduce print time.
The point of the handle is to protect the speaker from outside elements, as without it, the speaker cabinets inside would be directly exposed to the outside through the slot route. As there are also minimal foam, only protecting the speakers in its corners. The handle also acts as a dust cover.
Originally, I thought to have only 2 screws for the final handle. However, my boss wanted 2 more just incase if it falls out, even with glue. Hence, I designed the “dog bone“.
The flatter design of the dog bone, though could be printed better without support. The stepped down design not only looks better, but it also uses less material to print it, cause of the thinner wall and smaller screw holes.
After working with the grip, now we wanted to figure out how the box could be close. On a cardboard box, it is either friction fit or tape shut. These are fine options, as one is temporary, and the other one doesn’t care for the box after it has arrived in the customer’s house. Here, we are building high end equipment for the customer, hence the box should speaker for the quality.
To continue on with the 3D printing theme, I designed 3D printed grippers to help clamp the box shut. Through a prototype, we found that this was surprisingly grippy.
Whilst assembling, an idea of making one of the part a ruler for measuring indentation came up. This was a genius idea as it reduces the amount of parts required for assembly, and it reduces many of the human errors that could occur during assembly.
To make the whole thing easier to make. I 3D printed a jig for the slot.
