Bloom Rotary Dryer

Product Design
Designing a high-end rotary dryer
As the nature of this work is still confidential due to a pending patent, I will not yet be able to show any project visuals and details. However, I can provide a description of the work I've done. The design brief was to make a full scale functional prototype of an innovative, sustainable and high-end rotary dryer. 
My contributions

We completed this project as a team over the course of 20 weeks, where I took my responsibility in the following tasks:

  • Making product renders of the 3D model
  • Building the physical full scale prototype
  • Calculating the geometry and strength of the gear mechanism
  • Calculating the design specifications for the ground anchor
We started off the project by evaluating the current market for outdoor garment drying solutions, concluding that existing products were either really expensive or not aesthetically appealing and sustainable. We then created a design vision to form a strategy to improve the concept in terms of ergonomics, sustainability, user experience and aesthetics. The combination of hand-on prototyping and 3D CAD modeling gave us a good idea of the possibilities and limitations of manufacturing methods. The aim of the assignment was also to make the rotary dryer realistic for manufacturing.
Project process
IDE course: Advanced Embodiment Design
Feb 2022 — Jun 2022

Story

The movement the Bloom makes while unfolding is inspired by nature. The opening of a flower about to bloom is an enchanting experience, which we translated to the dryer. Due to a patent application, I cannot go into technical details yet, as this information is confidential. I can however say that the mechanism is ergonomically optimized for the design. The Bloom is made of sustainable materials, the beams are made of a bio-based composite that has high strength while still being recyclable. The lines, made from recycled PET, are twisted based on an old fisherman principle from Urk, that supports pinching the clothes in between the lines without using clips.

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