Just For Fun (and smart ecology) – Thunderbird1 Coffee Sleeve

Usually when I get a coffee in a paper cup I have to use two cups. The cup is usually too hot for me to hold. Most coffee houses now fix this by supplying a corrugated cardboard sleeve which makes holding the hot cup bearable.

I decided to stop wasting extra cups and extra sleeves and print one of my own. (Yes, you can buy them too, but where’s the fun in that?)

So I adapted one element of the new Thunderbird 1 (from the new TV series “Thunderbirds Are Go”, based on the original 1965 series “Thunderbirds”) as you can see here, and make a Coffee Sleeve based on Thunderbird 1:

tag-coffee-cuff-01 tag-coffee-cuff-02

What’s great about this is that inside the mass of the sleeve (what would be solid if this were an injection-molded part) is a lattice of support material, not a solid plastic interior. So that lattice works as a insulating material, with air to prevent the transmission of the heat to the hand. It’s like magic.

You can see the honeycombing and the number “1” which are taken directly from my recent 3D model of Thunderbird 1 seen here:

tag-tb1-3dprint-wings-assembled

Which is taken from the ship in the show:

tag-tb1-cgi-model-02

Here is an image of the honeycombing as seen on a physical model WETA/ITV is displaying at shows and their offices all over the world:

tag-tb1-physical-model-underside

 

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