Tooling

Tooling Before the students could travel to Kurtz Ersa and Fraunhofer ICT to foam the designs on the industrial machines, they had to produce functional molds. In addition to building the molds in the university workshops, design aspects of mold construction, pressure and heat resistance, demolding, dimensions and material thicknesses of the component or material …

Talk: Stephan Schenk from Stapelstein

Talk: Stephan Schenk from Stapelstein As part of our semester project “Precious Particle”, Stephan Schenk introduced us to his idea of stacking stones and his resulting company.Stapelsteine are semicircular “stones” made of EPP (expanded polypropylene) that are about 30 cm tall and can be stacked as high as you like. He explained the individual steps …

Interim Presentation

Interim Presentation In the interim presentation, the students briefly and informatively presented their sprint project designs to each other. Among the guests at the presentation was Stephan Schenk, who gave the students feedback on their designs the following day as a guest critic. The exhibition of the 22 projects gave everyone a good overview of …

Sprint 4: Close the circle!

Sprint 4: Close the circle! “Empower a specific target group to actively recycle through your designs. Design an object and its cycle. Design a recycling situation that is low-threshold and requires no political effort.”Sprint four of the methodical design exercise “precious particle” continued with this task. The students, each in teams of two, developed ideas …

Sprint 3: Add on! Lift up!

Sprint 3: Add on! Lift up! After completing the previous two sprints, new sprint topics were worked on in various group constellations within two weeks. One of these sprints, entitled “ADD ON! LIFT UP!” included the task of using particle foam to improve a given situation. As in the previous sprints, we were asked to …

Sprint 1: Take me along!

Sprint 1: Take me along! “Design an object for transportation: a bicycle box, a backpack, a handbag, a travel case, a lifebuoy… Explore the heat-insulating, lightweight, shock-absorbing and aesthetic properties as well as the possibilities of integrating functions and components.”Sprint 1 was about quickly developing ideas in teams of two and recording them in sketches. …

Introduction: CNC Styrocutting

Introduction: CNC Styrocutting Christoph Rafoth, Head of the Digital Workshop, introduced us to the use of the CNC Styrocut machine. The machine has two spatial axes and a rotary axis and uses a hot wire to cut geometric shapes out of solid foam blocks. The materials to be processed include Styrofoam (EPS), Styrodur as well …

Introduction: DIY particle foaming

Introduction: DIY particle foaming Particle foaming of EPS (expanded polystyrene) is a widely used process in the industry and is used to manufacture lightweight and robust products such as packaging, insulation and other applications.In the introduction to particle foaming in the pressure cooker, we first illustrated the production of molded parts and the industrial process …

Excursion: Kurtz Ersa

Excursion: Kurtz Ersa On Friday, we made a final stop on our three-day excursion at Kurtz Ersa in Kreuzwertheim near Würzburg, a mechanical engineering company that is now in its 7th generation of family management. The company, which was founded in 1779 as a hammer forge and later merged with the soldering machine manufacturer Ersa, …