Saturday, July 23, 2011

Mini-Project: Bottle Cap Catcher

While I realize that I could have accomplished something very similar by stapling a plastic Solo party cup to a hunk of wood, I thought it would be fun to model and then bend up some sheet metal to catch the caps from our bottle opener!  Here's some pictures!

First, I made a SolidWorks 3D model on the computer.

Then I printed out the un-folded shape, and cut it out of thin  aluminum that was sitting around the shop.

Folded up the walls, hemmed the raw edges, and added rivets.

Installation, including eye-lets for easy bottle cap disposal!
Testing!  Works like a charm!
(But I still might have to test it every now and again to make sure it 'works'!)

============  UPDATE  ============
I was curious how many bottle caps this held, so after a recent party, with the cup overflowing (I should have made it larger, who knew?), I did a little bottle-cap-counting.  @Anna, I had quite a collection, but didn't make any art out of them.

Anyway, SURVEY SAYS: Approximately 65 caps!
Next time, I'll make it about 3 times as large, to satisfy our summer BBQ crowds.

3 comments:

  1. What you gonna do with those bottle caps? I have some friends that are trying to make a table top. If there's nothing better for them you could send them my way :)

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  2. Hrmm... I have thought about some stuff, but they seem to just disappear normally around here. We host many social gatherings, and I haven't been able to hold on to bottle caps or wine corks, unfortunately. Could do some fun projects with each.

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  3. Who woulda thunk that beer drinkers could get any lazier! I'll take two.

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