Design a custom-shaped bottle opener giveaway
Goodies are a part of most conferences, but having memorable, personalized goodies on a limited budget is a real challenge. At TEDxTUM 2017, we designed an X-shaped bottle opener for our attendees — we thought it would be appropriate, given that Munich is located in Bavaria, the “beer capital” of the world! Check out how we did it and go make your own.
First of all, you need to design the shape of your opener. This can be tricky — our first prototype did not work too well. The angle of the pointy bit (no, I’m not an engineer, in case you haven’t noticed) was too steep.
Our Audience Experience Team went back to the drawing board and improved on the measurements of the opener. And there we go!
If you want to use the same X shape, you can directly download our source files. The package includes the .sat and .step files that you can edit with a CAD software like Fusion 360, and the .dxf file that you can send to a company specialized in realizing it.
The material we used was 2mm stainless steel (1.4301) and we specified for the openers to be deburred after cutting to avoid sharp edges. We worked with Laserwerk for this order and paid 750€ for 700 openers, all fees included.
The openers were a great success! When they arrived, we realized we had ordered 22kg of steel. Since then, we have to have beer at each team meeting, but hey, that’s not too bad. We think we found a reasonably priced goodie that represents our TEDx brand — better than a mousepad, anyways.
Go ahead and make your own custom openers! You can also include an engraving if you’d like. Let us know how it went, and most importantly, send us pictures!
Credit for all material goes to Oliver Czeizner from the TEDxTUM team, who not only made and collected the files, but also provided an explanation for dummies (me) on how to use them. Software Engineers are not “real” engineers… go figure!
