Began with preliminary ideation sketches and storyboarding. How could I capture the essence of a butter dish?
Imagining a use case. Working late into the night, in desperate need of a snack break. Make a piece of toast. Lift the lid of the butter dish and the room (and the butter) is illuminated by the dish's warm glow.
Tested size and general shape with a pink foam model. The form felt authentic.
First iteration was relatively successful. Needed to implement a better gripping mechanism for the lid, add a hole for the power source, let the acrylic sit flush in dish top, chamfer the inner edge of the lid groove, widen the power chord spot. There also needed a better mechanism to keep the board in place. Since I decided to switch from using battery power to USB and that required much less height, I was able to cut the dish thickness in half.
Back to Solidworks!
A rendering of the second iteration.
An exploded view of the second iteration.
Second iteration successfully implemented all suggested changes from the first iteration. While testing, I discovered the lid's light color was preventing the Arduino from reading that lid was on so I turned the inside black to reduce the inner light reflection.
The second and final iteration features: a lid with a finger placement dip for enhanced grip and that sits snugly on the dish, an acrylic panel that both supports the butter and allows for butter illumination, a friction fit mechanism to keep the dish top and bottom securely attached, a secure place for the Arduino board to sit with an opening for the USB power chord. The chord exits through the notches which also serves as indexing for the dish pieces.
