Cup of Tea - Tiger Sleeve

Tiger Sleeve

My project is a coffee cup sleeve that includes a handle. The sleeve was constructed by layering 3 mm black and orange acrylic that was cut into a circular shape. The top two and bottom two circular pieces included and extrusion on the back with a slot. This slot is where the handle was attached. The handle was made with 3 mm black acrylic, and the shape was created using heat forming. My initials were also engraved onto the top of the handle.

Mood Map 

My mood map consists of a lot of things I like to do on any given day. It includes basketball because I love playing basketball, as well as Goku because he is a character from one of my favorite anime TV shows. My favorite animal is also a tiger, so I was interested in using the colors black and orange. I do not drink coffee that often, however when I do its usually because I need to. I most often drink it when I have a long night and have to get up early the next morning and do work. I am usually rushed, so I am always drinking coffee on the go. I also included lined patterns on the mood map because I find them very aesthetically appealing and appreciate them.

The inspiration for this project comes from my appreciation for aesthetically appealing things. When I got coffee last week to brainstorm ideas for this project, the most striking part of the coffee cup was how bland the sleeve was. The sleeve is light-brown and did not have any design on it, as well as did not do its job because my hand was still feeling most of the heat from the coffee. A picture can be seen below. This drove me to create an aesthetically pleasing sleeve that would also keep your hand from feeling the heat of the coffee.

Sketches

I knew I wanted to do a sleeve with a lined pattern, so I sketched it out to see how it looked. I also sketched out the connection piece in which the handle would be bent around.

Prototyping

The first part of the prototyping included creating the shape for each piece of the layered acrylic. This was done using solidworks. I did not want the the sleeve to be a simple circle, so I created divots around the circle. It was an iterative process to get the correct size for the inner and outer circles, as I wanted the sleeve to go up to a certain height on the cup. After a couple iterations, the perfect size was determined to be an inner diameter of 3.1 inches with and outer diameter of 3.39 inches. A screenshot of the shape used for laser cutting can be found below, as well as one of the laser cut layers of acrylic.

The pieces were then layered and the actual sleeve was created.

After the sleeve, the last step was to make the handle. I originally made a handle by bending a 10 inch piece of black acrylic, however once it was created and I started using it I realized that the handle was way too large. The point where your hand grabbed the handle was about 4-5 inches from the actual sleeve, so I had to make some changes. 

For my redesign of the handle, I changed the total length to 7.5 inches to reduce the overall size. I also decided to angle the handle slightly upwards to give it more of a handle aesthetic. My initials were also engraved on the handle to recognize the creator.