Theale Green Produces a Winner
Joshua Davis, winner of the PTC Award for Education in the 2001 European Competition, attended one of the first schools in the UK to pilot the Design & Technology in Schools Program. In his last year at Theale Green Community School in Berkshire, Josh decided that he wanted to design a product for his final A-level project. This is how he describes his experience of designing and producing his award-winning concept telephone.
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| Pro/DESKTOP rendering. |
My one-year project started with a brief—to design and make a working prototype of a DECT (Digitally Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications) telephone. The project was “aesthetically based” in that I wanted to give the humble telephone a new look, to turn the clichéd black box into an object of desire. I decided to use the electronics from an old phone and insert them into the design, which straight away created a design envelope to work around. I worked on the project with help from Mr. Badcock and Mr. Herd, teachers within the Technology Department.
The project began with research into telephones, the customer, design (such as Philippe Starck and Art Deco), technology and manufacturing processes. I chose DECT technology because of its recent release onto the market, and the cordless application simplified the design challenge. I aimed the new, high-quality telephone at a market with high disposable income.
Initial designs started with pen and paper. I explored many designs with the use of hand-made foam models, as well as wooden and paper models, exporting .stl files to an A3 CAM router and CAM paper cutter. Although Theale Green students now learn Pro/DESKTOP in their very first year (at age 11), the program was only introduced when I started the sixth form. I therefore had to learn the program myself. With its friendly interface and tutorials, Pro/DESKTOP was easy to pick up so that I quickly had the skills to construct my own 3D renders.
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| Stereo lithography in process. |
Once I finalized the design, I modeled the electronics in Pro/DESKTOP to scale and assembled them with the casings. Straight away, I had to rescale the whole design to fit the electronics—a simple operation in Pro/DESKTOP. I was then able to adapt aspects of the design to create a good construction of the phone. Major adjustments were made to the base station to accommodate the large circuit board, and a hole for the LCD display was cut away from the casing to mount the screen. Magnets were also added to hold the handset on the base station and recharge through.
After all the improvements had been made and the telephone was a complete product in Pro/DESKTOP, I set about its production. My initial plan was to vacuum-form the cases, using Pro/DESKTOP to design and manufacture the molds. Since this did not produce the high-quality finish required, I looked into manufacturing the cases using the A3 router. Since it had only 3 axes, I had to mill out the inside first, turn the work piece over and then mill the outside. I pioneered this method, refining certain operations to increase productivity. The cases were produced from MDF, which I finished by hand and then painted to give a plastic-like effect. Final assembly produced a high-quality, working product that I submitted for assessment.
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| Completed stereo lithography model. |
It was my teacher, Mr. Badcock, who prompted me to enter the 2001 PTC Awards competition, where my telephone design came in first in the education category in the European competition and a finalist in the subsequent international competition. My entire A-level project was also a finalist in the Stuart Pugh Prize competition, a national award in England. Work from the project has been on display in the headquarters of the Department of Education for Design and Technology in London.
Now that I am studying product design at Bournemouth University, I have found that the skills I acquired during this project are helping me produce high-quality work. Pro/DESKTOP taught me the basics of PTC’s approach to 3D modeling, which I can now use in Pro/ENGINEER. CAD is a great tool and extremely useful, and I plan to further my skills in Pro/ENGINEER to improve my work in product design. 
