Embedded Files
What Is It?
The Alignment Lockbox is a space-themed lockbox with the inner planets of our solar system orbiting around on the front face. Each box's planets are aligned to a unique date in time, indicated by the user. The date is usually significant, for example, a birthday, anniversary, etc. You can only open the box when the planets are moved to their locations on the selected date. I also briefly marketed the idea and created a website to collect orders.
Final Product Photos
Alignment On December 2, 2019
How I Made It
I designed all the parts of the box using AutoCad. Each box is made up of over 30 pieces which can all be made using just a laser cutter and 3d printer. I used an iterative approach when designing the box which looked something like this:
Design a prototype on AutoCad
Get the parts made
Put it together
Make refinements
And repeat until satisfied with the design
There were seven major iterations of the project and it took me about a year, after many challenges, to get the design finalized. There was also another problem, since each box opened based on the planetary positions on the user-defined date, I'd have to calculate the positions of the planets for every customer order. To solve this problem, I developed a tool for my smartphone that took all the user-defined dates from the order website, calculated the planetary positions on that date, and generated a card with the alignment to include each shipment. View the images below to see what this all looked like.
Program I Made To Generate Alignments
This is the output of the program. These cards show customers where the planets were located on the date selected so they'll know how to open their box. Since the program works based on calculating the alignment instead of referring to a database, customers can pick any date in the past or future. The cards also include info and a thank you message which can be adjusted on the program.
Sample Designs
These are a couple of designs from the project. If you'd like to see original files, please email me at: Hayden.Kreuter@me.com
What I Learned:
App development using SwiftUI
2D and 3D design in AutoCad
Basics of 3d printing
Basics of laser cutting
Basics of product design
How to market a product
Basics of business including types of businesses and how to form a business.
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