Project 2: Sharps Dispenser

Goal: to design and build a sharps dispenser for cutting blades, that will contain blades used in L024 and can be thrown away with the garbage.

My group members and I started by brainstorming many ideas, including mechanisms that would roll the blades in paper and a foam box with a hole in it. Eventually, we decided on a foam box which would make it nearly impossible for sharp blades to fall out of it because of a folded piece of cardboard, which would block the slit in the case that the container was tipped over. Surprisingly, the initial sketch was pretty similar to what we ended up building.

Foam-lined box with slit

The blade would be wrapped in paper and dropped into a box - not the most feasible idea.

The sketch we chose to work with.

Finding materials and deciding what the box would be made of was actually not that bad. I knew that there was a bin of throwaway foam outside, and we found a foam box (with lid!). We cut a hole in the lid, and measured a piece of cardboard to put inside the box. We didn't have to glue the cardboard in the box because it fits in tightly to two sides of the box. The other two sides of the cardboard create gaps with the foam box for the blades to fall under.

The cardboard triangle, with two sides for the blades to fall through.

Towards the end of class, we decided that we should probably test out the box, to see if it actually worked. And it does! One of my group members dropped in part of a blade, shook around the box, even turning it upside down. The blade stayed in the box, and was trapped beneath the cardboard triangle. Excellent!

The next thing to do was to decorate the box so that it would look like a sharps container. Unfortunately, my two group members from the first day of class did not return, but my new partner Isabella and I chose to cover the container with red construction paper and orange triangles, to denote that this was 1) a box for dangerous things that are 2) sharp (hence the triangles). Additionally, we cut out two orange triangles, which point towards the opening of the box.

Isabella with the finished product!