While working as a Product Designer for Square One Product Development, I worked on designing and fabricating the enclosure for a bee medicating device called the BeeKeep for Perpetual Pollen - a company working to save the bees.
The BeeKeep works by luring bees through a one-way door via sweet fondant. Once the bees are inside the BeeKeep, they are funneled through to the medicating station where they are dusted with a medicated wax that kills harmful parasites. After medicated, the bees are led through another one-way door to a grooming pad where they can shake off excess wax. Then, they are off on their merry, parasite-free way!
Sketch provided by TEAMS design from previous exploration on user journey
Here's a look into some of the work I did on this project! First, I developed the enclosure design based off of Perpetual Pollen's product vision and previous work done on defining the user journey and exploration of possible form factors.
All 3D modeling done in Fusion 360
After developing the design in CAD, I fabricated some rough mock-ups out of wood and 3D printed parts. We used this mockup to refine the enclosure dimensions, open/close mechanism, and overall assembly.
After iterating on the design, we developed a refined prototype - this was the final deliverable for the project - a functional prototype of the enclosure that the electronic components (solar panels, medication dispenser) and fondant could later be added into.
After the functional prototype was presented and the project was closing out, we presented few more design suggestions and refinements to implement with continued work.
One refinement, was fabricating the landing/grooming platform mounts out of sheet metal as well. The functional prototype featured 3d printed mounts that were quite fragile and required the use of screws. The proposed sheet metal platform mounts would use built in teeth to attach to the wood.
We also developed a mounting solution that utilized a metal bracket mounted on a post for placement in the user's garden/yard. The BeeKeep easily snaps into the mount via magnets and stays in place laterally via the central waist feature.
