Entry 16: Sourcing for Materials@IKEA

19 June 2012

Today, we went to IKEA Tampines to source for the materials and measure the costs to build our prototype. Our objective was mainly to confirm the expendable mechanism which we are using as well as the  cost and quality of wood used.

The first things that caught our eyes were metal poles. These metal poles were made of stainless steel, which prevented rusting of the stand, and this allowed us to come up with a plan for the expendable base.

This is how it looks:

Basically, there will be squarish parts connected to both ends of the metal poles. The wood we will use is specially carved to the shape above, in which the internal part fits the squarish part on the pole but the hole on the surface of the blocks do not fit the square on the pole to prevent it from sliding out.

We named the corner blocks block 1 and 2. Basically, we would make the squarish parts of the poles in block 2 fixed, whereas the squarish parts of the poles in block 1 are confined to the space within the block but can move from one end to the other. This allows the base to be expandable. Thus, the support structure will be placed on block 1 instead of between block 1 and 2 to make the design more practical. When the base is expanded, the poles are exposed. Hence, we use block "add-ons" to be placed over the poles to cover them up as well as to act as support for larger tanks. We have planned for 2 "add-ons" to be included in our design, thus our base can now fit fish tanks of 3 different lengths.

However, there are a few problems in the design. Firstly, we have no idea who to ask on how to carve internal shape of the wooden blocks 1 and 2. Even if we had help, the expertise required for carving such intricate designs would not come cheap. Next, we had no idea where to find the squarish parts on the end of the poles and how to connect them at all. Thus, we were left with a few loopholes for this idea.

We also came up with major dimensions for the stand. We decided to confirm this only after we had found all the materials required.

We then decided to search for wooden parts for the base. However, our efforts were in vain as we realised that isolated wooden planks could not be found in IKEA and only wooden furniture (self-service packaging types) could be found. Hence, nothing much could be resolved.

Even though we tried our best today, nothing much was resolved. Hence, we hope that we are able to source for materials with greater luck and efficiency the next time.