Final Project Holder
Intention
I have a lot of nail polish that I’ve just piled into a plastic baggie inside a cosmetics bag. It works for when I travel, but when I’m actually in my dorm, it’s a pain to shuffle through.
I tend to paint my nails a lot, so having a nice container for my nail polishes is pretty important to me.
Research & Context
The kinds of storage for nail polish I’ve often seen only include large wall mounted shelves, which I can’t have in a dorm and I don’t have room for at home. They also aren’t sold in stores as far as I’m aware, so they’re usually made by professionals (expensive) or by the user themselves (could be unstable).
I also don’t have that many bottles of polish, so it wouldn’t make sense both budget and space wise to dedicate so many resources to my small nail polish collection.
Aesthetic Inspiration
My idea for my holder came from a combination of Lazy Susans and typical clear acrylic makeup holders found in container stores. I wanted something that would allow me easier access to my nail polish without (hopefully) bumping my wet nails and ruining them, as well as something that would allow me to see the colors or, in my case, boxes of the nail polish without needing to take them out first.
Sketches and Prototypes
Process & Procedure
I made three prototypes in total. The first was made just for a basic idea of what I wanted for my holder but did not include any concrete mechanism to allow the inner platform to spin. The second was made in order to test my DXF of the living hinges, which turned out well. This was when I originally sent in my two 3D printed spinner components to the Stratasys, so I was unable to test the fit on this second cardboard prototype. The third prototype allowed me to test whether the acrylic glue would hold the living hinges to the other pieces, which I determined to be a good hold. I had my 3D printed components here, and they fit snuggly as I had hoped. I took these 3D prints off the acrylic prototype and used them for my final model, since they were meant to be removable anyway.
In modeling my nail polish holder, I created two cylinders extruded from circle sketches that would represent the outer and inner platforms. I shelled them to have a 3mm thickness, representing the 3mm thick acrylic I would eventually use. For the spinning component, I made more cylindric extrusions, shelling out the one that would be the outer part. I added a revolving joint between the inner platform and outer platform to simulate how I expected the end result to spin.
I chose a living hinge pattern from this site’s downloads. I created a new Fusion file in order to make the DXF for my curved pieces, but first measured the inner circumferences of the two curved pieces in my original file, using the inspect tool. I made a sketch of just two rectangles and copy-pasted the DXF repeatedly until the living hinge covered the entirety of each rectangle.
For my final product, I used a green edge tinted piece of acrylic for all parts of the laser cut portions, as well as the aforementioned 3D prints from the Stratasys. Using the acrylic cement, I adhered the acrylic pieces together and the bottom print of the spinner to the bottom of the outer base. I didn’t glue together the two spinner pieces as I intended to allow them to be removable for easy cleaning of the holder.
Final Product
Reflection
Overall, I thought my final product came out well. I would’ve liked to use a different technique to make the curved parts, possibly using heat the bend a piece of acrylic instead of cutting living hinges. Although the cuts took a long time, what really cut into a huge portion of my time was glueing the hinges to the bases and top. I spent at least three hours in total just glueing things together, for the prototype and final model combined. Aside from the gluing, I made a mistake in cutting the hinges. I didn’t cut all the way through in the first pass, but in checking if I had full cuts, I moved the pieces a little too much. Because of the flexibility of the hinges, they didn’t return to their original places even as I held down the acrylic sheet to try to ensure as little movement as possible. My second pass gave me extra cuts just a tiny bit off from the original cut for half of each hinge. I definitely would want to avoid doing any large scale hinge cuts if I were to remake this project.
After starting to use my nail polish holder, I also realised the inner platform would bend down when it was spun out because of the weight of the nail polish. I’d probably want to make some kind of support for that, most likely with just extended the outer platform to make a full circle instead of cutting it as I did.
Despite the flaws and difficulties that came with making the product, it has definitely already been easier to paint my nails with this holder. My nail polishes are more accessible, and I no longer need to dig around a bag to find the bottle I need. It also just looks much prettier than my old plastic baggie.
