Outcome

With my mood board, I was inspired by simple, flowing designs and I wanted to build a cupholder that would have this appearance. I decided that using a single piece of acrylic was the best way to achieve this, since it avoids having any glue or joints which would take away from  the clean look.

Prototyping

I began by making a simple paper cutout to test the dimensions of my cupholder. This way I could make sure everything fit properly without wasting acrylic.

Using the dimensions of this paper cutout as a reference, I produced a CAD model that could be cut out on a laser cutter.

I cut this out on thin acrylic, which was chosen because it would be easier to heat form than thicker material. However, I did not account for the fact that the acrylic could stretch easily when heated and the rings quickly became too large for the cup.

For my second prototype, I significantly shrank the size of the rings, however, it proved to be difficult to manually bend a complex shape by hand, especially since the makespace only had right gloves. As a result, this prototype could hold a cup, but had a sloppy look and did not have the clean, simple design that I wanted.

Final Prototype

To improve on my previous prototype, I built some simple tools out of acrylic that could be used to press the correct shapes into the handle and rings. These consisted of a half circle for removing the rough edges on the rings and two pieces that could be used to make the handle more even. I also was more careful with bending the handle, and was able to achieve a much better result than the previous prototype.

After finishing the initial heat forming, I cleaned up the design with the tools that I made earlier.

Final Product