How It’s Designed: Midwest Brewing Supplies Bottle Opener

Whenever a young mechanical engineer asks what they should study or work on to become a good design engineer I usually tell them to go watch the “How It’s Made” videos. In reality, the videos won’t help you pass your calculus class or understand thermodynamics any better. But, when it comes to design, it is very advantageous to know how things are made. The thing that really makes the best mechanical design engineers stand out is that they know how their designs are made. A big part of understanding how it is made is that you can then have a good idea how much it costs to make it. At the end of the day we all know that one of the biggest considerations whenever you design something, is how much it is going to cost. And you can’t estimate cost very well if you don’t know how you are going to make it.

I want to start a new category to this blog called How It’s Designed. I will do a design review of a product and describe some of things I would take into consideration if I would have designed it. Now I carefully say the phrase “if I would have designed it” because as with a lot of designing, there is more than one way to skin a cat. This is pretty evident in all of the choices we have in the different products we use every day. I also will probably bore a lot of more experienced designers and engineers because I will explain simple things that become a habit to many engineers when designing. I will also be sticking to products usually designed by a mechanical engineer.

The first item I want to review is a bottle opener from Midwest Brewing Supplies. The overall design is very simple, but it is a great start for some basic design considerations. Bottle openers come in all shapes and sizes, from fancy ones to show off at a party, to even ones in the sole of your flip flop. The one I am reviewing is a very simple opener that is made of sheet metal.

For this product, the cut out opening is what makes the design somewhat unique The shape of the cutout is different on so many designs because you just need a shape that is big enough for about half of a bottle cap to fit in. On this opener, the bottom portion of the cutout has a small lip that has been machined down. This is so that the bottom lip will fit underneath the bottle cap easily. If the sheet metal is too thick, it will be difficult to fit beneath the edge of the bottle cap.

Material selection is usually another top consideration as a mechanical design engineer. This particular product needs to open hundreds if not thousands of bottles without wearing out or breaking. So, a soft material like plastic is definitely out of the question. I say plastic a little too generally, but even an appropriately selected plastic would definitely wear out over time. A metal would definitely be the most obvious selection, but there are still quite a few different metals to choose from. Aluminum would not be a bad choice, but it would probably wear out over time and aluminum costs more than steel. Steel would definitely be strong enough, but the next consideration would be what type of steel. Stainless steel would be the best choice for this part because kitchens are notoriously a wet environment. And stainless steel is also a food safe material. The overall size of this particular bottle opener is a very convenient size since it is small enough to fit in your pocket or wallet, and yet still big enough to easily hold on to. It doesn’t take a lot of strength to open a bottle, and it is unlikely that you will be doing hundreds at a time, so ergonomics are not really a concern for the size and shape. The little hole in the corner is convenient to add a rope or chain to hang in a convenient place in the kitchen. Sometimes flat items are hard to pick up off a wet counter so the hole allows it to be hung up. Hanging it up in a permanent spot on the wall would also prevent from someone accidentally walking away with it.

One of the last considerations would be the finish to the surface. The finish to this bottle opener could have been just about anything. It could have been a light orbital sand. It could have been a heavy grain sand. It could have been polished to a mirror finish. But the finish chosen is economical and looks great and that is a brushed finish.

Even an incredibly simple product as a sheet metal bottle opener still has a lot of design considerations. There are so many different directions that an engineer could take with the design. As with most design, some sketches would be made, a CAD model would be developed, and then prototypes could be made and evaluated. Just think about the products you use and see around you ever day. Some engineer has considered nearly every detail of that product to make it look, feel, and perform the way it does.