The helping hand was designed as a project for Design for Manufacturing, a class which taught me the most ideal and efficient way to design my products to be mass produced. This was the final project for the class. The prompt was to take two or more Design processes we learned over the semester and utilize it to create any product we wished to.
The inspiration behind this project came from multiple observations I made in my home back in New Jersey, and from where I live in college. I noticed that sponges and dishtowels never had a permanent home. Yet somehow the top of the faucet was always used as a bar to hand a dish towel from. This gave me the idea of created a faucet attachment with multiple ends to hold various kitchen sink tools.
The two processes that I decided to use was injection molding (modeled by 3-D Printing) and metal production (for the dish towel attachment). I went through the process of rapid idea generation for the shape, and CAD modeled the base with 3 different attachments (sponge holder, dishtowel hook, dish towel bar) . I then took my design and added drafts and parting lines to mimic the design of an injection molded part. I used the 3-D printers in our lab to print out all 3 attachments and bent metal rods to replicate the towel hook.